At its annual meeting last week, the American Law Institute approved an amendment, which NCCUSL (a.k.a. the Uniform Law Commission) had previously approved, replacing the oft-jilted text of Revised UCC § 1-301 with language consistent with pre-Revised UCC § 1-105:
§ 1-301. Territorial Applicability; Parties’ Power to Choose Applicable Law.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, when a transaction bears a reasonable relation to this state and also to another state or nation the parties may agree that the law either of this state or of such other state or nation shall govern their rights and duties.
(b) In the absence of an agreement effective under subsection (a), and except as provided in subsection (c), [the Uniform Commercial Code] applies to transactions bearing an appropriate relation to this state.
(c) If one of the following provisions of [the Uniform Commercial Code] specifies the applicable law, that provision governs and a contrary agreement is effective only to the extent permitted by the law so specified:
(1) Section 2-402;
(2) Sections 2A-105 and 2A-106;
(3) Section 4-102;
(4) Section 4A-507;
(5) Section 5-116;
[(6) Section 6-103;]
(7) Section 8-110;
(8) Sections 9-301 through 9-307.
In so doing, the bodies responsible for the Uniform Commercial Code followed the lead of thirty-two of the thirty-three states that have enacted Revised Article 1 to date. Only Louisiana — deferring to its Civil Code to ascertain the applicable law where the transaction does not fall within the scope of a more specific choice-of-law provision elsewhere in the UCC — has enacted a version of Revised § 1-301 that differs non-trivially from the new official version.
* - As in, "Which state's law do you want to govern our contract?"
