What is the Uniform Commercial Code?

Commercial law (as a general topic) is the law of commerce, lex mercatoria (sometimes called the law merchant in civil law countries). It is generally regulated by the states within the United States rather than the federal government (which only regulates trade between the states and with other countries). To build a uniform body of law, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (commonly called NCCUSL) and the American Law Institute (which also drafts the various Restatements of Law) drafted the Uniform Commercial Code in 1955. It was eventually substantially adopted in all of the states within the United States. It replaced its various predecessors, such as the Uniform Sales Act, the Uniform Negotiable Instruments Law and so on. The Permanent Editorial Body (commonly called the PEB) was established by the ALI and NCCUSL to monitor the UCC. Over the past 50 years, various updates and revisions have been approved, so the Uniform Commercial Code as adopted in all ...  more

The NCCUSL and the American Law Institute created the Uniform Commercial Code in a joint effort. It took over ten years to originally draft the UCC, and a further fourteen years for the UCC to be implemented across the country. The creation of the UCC began in 1940 in an effort to "attack major commercial problems with comprehensive legal solutions"(from NCCUSL's history page). The UCC allows commercial organizations to do business across jurisdictional boundaries with confidence because these organizations are fairly certain that the same rules apply in each jurisdiction. The UCC has been enacted in every state with the exception of Louisiana.

The UCC Branch is the branch of the Office of the Secretary of State that is responsible for administering the duties of the Secretary of State pursuant to Revised Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. In addition to filing and maintaining financing statements, including amendments and correction statements, the UCC branch provides information to the public on the filed records.  more