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1906: The Uniform Sales Act
When the United States broke away from England, they kept her legal system. Even today, forty-nine of the fifty states base their laws on the old English common law. (Louisana bases its legal system on a blend of English common law and French civil law.) Still, each state’s laws are different.
The Uniform Sales Act of 1906 was an attempt to regulate commerce in the United States. This was the time of the great robber barons who banded together to monopolize commodities in their area so that they could manipulate prices and profits. There was great need for regulation.
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The Uniform Sales Act was one of several uniform laws intended to minimize the differences in laws between the states. Each state had the option to write its own statutes, adopting all, some, or none of each uniform act to fit the particular state. The hope was that, where several states enacted the same provision of a uniform act, their interpretations of that provision would be consistent.
1952: A Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.)
Eventually the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws realized there was a need to update the existing statutes. In 1940, the president of the conference first proposed the idea of a Uniform Commercial Code to replace seven of the older uniform acts, including the Uniform Sales Act, and to bring the laws of commerce up to date.
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