By: Justin L. Vigdor
Boylan Code, LLP
Every lawyer is familiar with the Uniform Commercial Code, and most lawyers are familiar with various other statutes having the word “Uniform” in their title, as for example, the Uniform Gifts to Minors Act. Few lawyers, however, are aware of the genesis of these Uniform Acts, dozens of which have been enacted by virtually every state.
Uniform Acts are drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, also known as “NCCUSL” or the “Uniform Law Commission”. The Conference was formed in 1892 in Saratoga Springs, New York. Each of the 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, has its own Uniform Law Commission whose Commissioners are active members of the Conference.
Commissioners serve without compensation but may be reimbursed for their necessary out-of-pocket expenses. Each state determines the number of its own Commissioners which range from three (e.g. Iowa, Massachusetts) to twelve (e.g. California). In some states, the appointive power is divided between the governor and legislature. Commissioners must be lawyers. A large number are legislators, legislative staff, state and federal judges, law school deans and professors.
Past Commissioners whose names are known to every lawyer and law student include President Woodrow Wilson, Supreme Court Justices Brandeis, Rutledge and Rehnquist, and many legendary scholars, including Roscoe Pound, Samuel Williston, John Wigmore and William Prosser.
The Commissioners from each of the 53 jurisdictions serve on over 50 Study Committees, Drafting Committees and Standby Committees. A Study Committee focuses on a subject which has been initially identified by a Commissioner, or any other interested party as meriting uniformity among the states. A topic which is deemed worthy is referred to a drafting committee. Each drafting committee engages a scholar, expert in the field, to work with it for a two to four-year period. During this time, on two or three very full, three-day weekends during each year, the drafting committee meticulously, and in a non-partisan fashion, works on interim drafts of a proposed Act. Observers and advisors from industry, public interest organizations, or other interested groups, are invited to attend the drafting meetings and may participate in discussions without voting rights, however.
Each summer, approximately 350 Commissioners from all of the 53 jurisdictions meet, in a plenary assembly, for a full week to read aloud, line by line and word by word, debate and discuss and amend, if necessary, completed drafts. After an Act has been read and debated at a minimum of two such annual conferences, it is approved by a vote of the states, submitted for approval by the American Bar Association, and promulgated for consideration by each state legislature as worthy of enactment.
Standby Committees are charged with monitoring the state- by-state adoption process and following the development of case law which may suggest the need of future amendments or revisions of Uniform Acts.
Recent Conference promulgations include the Uniform Athletes’ Agent Act, the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, Uniform Securities Act, the Uniform Transfer on Death Security Registration Act, the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, the Uniform Arbitration Act, the Uniform Mediation Act, the Uniform Trade Secrets Act and the Uniform Emergency Volunteer Health Practitioner’s Act. The latter was drafted in response to the devastation in the Gulf States from Hurricane Katrina. It allows out-of-state medical professionals to practice in any area which may, in the future, be afflicted by natural disaster or other grave emergency.
Information on all Uniform Acts, including complete texts, can be found at www.nccusl.org. Each section of an Act is accompanied by Official Comments which describe its derivation from common law, its deviation from common law, other relevant statutes and which may cite relevant law review articles. The Official Comments are never part of the law as enacted, but are helpful to courts and practitioners in construing both the letter and intent of the Acts.
