Uniform Commercial Code


At the heart of the market economy are contracts between buyers and sellers under which both parties have rights and obligations. One of the cornerstones of contract law in the U.S. is the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.). Thanks to the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School, the U.C.C. is available on the Internet via Gopher and World Wide Web.

In the United States it is the states, rather than the Federal government, which draft the primary elements of commercial law. The Uniform Commercial Code, first published in 1952 as a joint project of the American Law Institute and the National Conference of Commissioners, has been adopted, at least in part, by every state in the U.S. Most of its provisions are in effect in most of the states.

In addition to the Uniform Commercial Code itself, the Legal Information Institute (LII) has also uploaded "Official Comments" for each section of the Code. According to LII's introductory document:

While these comments have not been enacted by state legislatures, they are heavily relied on by lawyers and courts. They are, by far, the most important source of assistance in interpreting the Code.
The Legal Information Institute has done an excellent job in utilizing World Wide Web technology to make the document easy to read. The home page lists the U.C.C.'s 9 Articles:

When you select an Article you are taken to a page which lists all the Parts of an article with a list of Section titles under each Part. For example Article 2 of the U.C.C. includes seven Parts:

Article 2 - Sales

The Sections under Part 6 - Breach, Repudiation and Excuse, include:

When you select a Section you are taken to that section of the Code, which is generally a clear explanation of the rights and responsibilities of the parties involved in a commercial transaction. At the bottom of the section code there are options that take you to "Official Comments" or other parts of the Code which are relevant to the section you selected. Throughout the U.C.C. the viewer can view definitions of terms such as "Good faith," "Acceptance," "Contract for sale," "Termination," etc.

This electronic version of the Uniform Commercial Code is available directly via Gopher or World Wide Web. Because the document is broken down into small components (which makes it easy to view online), it is virtually impossible to download or e-mail it to someone else. However, LII has formatted the document into a Window's based program, which it will mail to people on diskette for a reasonable fee. For more information about this option contact Peter W. Martin at: [email protected]

For those with a World Wide Web viewer such as Mosaic or Lynx, the URL is:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/ucc.table.html
For those with Gopher capability, "gopher" to:
fatty.law.cornell.edu
From the main menu select in succession:
-U.S. Law: Primary Documents and Commentary/
-Commercial Law/
-Uniform Commercial Code (WWW version)
This last selection will call up a very threatening message about leaving the Internet. Don't panic, press Enter and at the login prompt type:
www
We have also put in a link to the Uniform Commercial Code from our files at Friends and Partners. From the F&P home page, select:
-Center for Civil Society International
-CCSI's Electronic Top Ten
-Uniform Commercial Code


This article is from the October 1994 issue of
Net Talk

For more information or to order a subscription, see our publications page.


The URL for this page is: http://solar.rtd.utk.edu/~ccsi/csew/94-10/ucc.html
Last updated: October 8, 1996

Center for Civil Society International
[email protected]