Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Doctrinal UCC Scholarship: A Guilty Pleasure

I would like to thank Jennifer Martin for inviting me to guest blog here at Commercial Law. As Jason and Jennifer's entries mention, I have been spending a bit of my research time in the last few years on a comprehensive review of the fraud cases decided under revised Articles 3 and 4. It is a bit insane to be doing commercial paper doctrine in the waning days of the check, but--to report back--it has been a tremendous amount of fun. Although it sometimes seems as if doctrinal scholarship is the current bete noire of legal scholarship, I found the experience of wading through 100s of fraud cases to be analytically rigorous, challenging, and rewarding. Writing in a style that includes judges and lawyers as part of the discussion takes a certain amount of craftsmanship. The doctrinal project also has produced huge dividends in teaching the UCC and, in my experience, has significantly informed and even changed my prior views about the UCC fraud loss provisions.

Without meaning at all to impugn theory or empiricism, it is wildly fun to take a long, close look at the Code in action.

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