书城外语法律专业英语教程
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第48章 Commercial Law 商法(4)

In theinterest of uniformity and reform, the legal profession, under the leadership of the American Law Institute, has suggested comprehensive codes of laws to be adopted by the states. The most important of these for business is the Uniform Comm ercial Code. Other uniform laws havebeen developed for partnership, corporate, and probate among others, but the most ambitious uniform act of all is the UniformComm ercial Code.

V Paragraph translation from Chinese into English.

1.商法(有时也称为商业法)是用以管理商业交易的法律体系。它常常被认为是民法的一个分支,处理包括公法与私法的问题。

2.商法的管理范围包括委托人和代理人等的相关法令;陆地和海洋运输;商船海运;保单;海运业、火、生命和事故保险;汇票及合伙关系。它也可以被理解为规范公司合同、雇佣实践及消费品的生产和销售(的法令)。

VI Oral work.

Can you give a brief introduction to the Uniform Commercial Code?

Uniform Commercial Code

The Uniform Commercial Code ( UCC or the Code) is one of a number of uniform acts that have been promulgated in conjunction with efforts to harmonize the law of sales and other commercial transactions in all 50 states within the United States of America. This objective is deemed important because of the prevalence today of commercial transactions that extend beyond one state ( for example,where the goods are manufactured in state A, warehoused in state B, sold from state C and delivered in state D) . The UCC deals primarily with transactions involving personal property ( movable property) , not real property ( immovable property) .

The UCC is the longest and most elaborate of the uniform acts. It has been a longterm, joint project of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws( NCCUSL) and the American Law Institute ( ALI) . Judge Herbert Funk. Goodrich was the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the original 1952 edition, and the Code itself was drafted by some of the top legal scholars in the United States, including Karl N. Llewellyn, William A. Schnader, Soia Metchnikoff, and Grant Gilmore. The Code, as the product of private organizations, is not itself the law, but only recommendation of the laws that should be adopted in the states. Once enacted in a state by the state s legislature, it becomes true law and is codified into the state s code of statutes. When the Code is adopted by a state, it may be adopted verbatim as written by ALI and NCCUSL, or may be adopted with specific changes deemed necessary by the state legislature. Unless such changes are minor, they can affect the purpose of the Code in promoting uniformity of law among the various states.

The ALI and NCCUSL have also established a permanent editorial board for the Code. This board has issued a number of official comments and other published papers concerning the Code. Although these commentaries do nothave the force of law, courts interpreting the Code often cite them as persuasive authority in determining the effect of one or more provisions. Courts interpreting the Code generally seek to harmonize their interpretations with those of other states that have adopted the same or a similar provision, except where specific aspects of the Code were changed by that state when adopting it, or where other aspects of state law require a different decision.

The Code, in one or another of its several revisions, has been enacted in all of the 50 states, as well as in the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Louisiana has enacted most provisions of the UCC with the exception of Article 2, preferring to maintain its own civil law tradition for governing the sale of goods.

Louisiana jurisprudence refers to the sections of the UCC as“chapters”instead of articles, since the term“articles”is used to refer to provisions of the state s Civil Code. However, the use of different terms for UCC articles is not unique to Louisiana; neighboring Arkansas also refers to UCC articles as“chapters”, the term for equivalent subdivisions in its code of statutes (“Article”in that state s law generally refers to a subdivision of the Arkansas Constitution) .

promulgate / pr m lgeit/vt. 公布;传播;发表

conjunction /k n dkn/n.[语]连接词;结合;同时发生

harmonize / h m naiz /vt.使和谐;使一致vi.协调;和谐;以和声唱

prevalence / prev l ns/n.流行;普遍;广泛

warehouse / whaus/n.仓库;货栈;大商店vt.储入仓库

verbatim /vbeitim/adv.逐字地adj.逐字的

uni form acts统一法

personalproperty动产

realproperty不动产

code of statutes成文法典

the force of l aw法律效力

persuasi ve authori ty劝导性法源

Herbert Funk Goodrich (赫伯特·放克·古德里奇): Herbert Funk Goodrich ( born July 29, 1889, Anoka, Minnesota, died June25, 1962) was a judge on the United States Court f Appeals for theThird Circuit. Healso served as theDirector of theAmerican Law Institute and chaired the drafting committee for theoriginal version of theUniformCommercial Code.

Guilt always hurries towards its complement, punishment; only there does its atisfaction lie.

—Lawrence Durrell (British writer)