Commercial Law and the American Volk: A Note on Llewellyn's German Sources for the Uniform Commercial Code

Abstract

American commercial law is largely the creation of America's most eccentric legal philosopher. Karl Llewellyn was the principal author of the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.).' He gave the Code an often baffling jurisprudential framework: The U.C.C. regularly refuses to supply substantive rules. Instead, with startling frequency, the Code directs courts to determine whether the parties in a given commercial dispute have acted "reasonably" or in accordance with "customs" and "usages of trade" that are nowhere specified or described in the Code itself. The Code's routine use of these vague directives has irritated some commentators and thrilled many others.' Almost as soon as it appeared, a body of scholarly commentary began to grow up around Llewellyn's strangely indefinite Code," and scholars continue to search for the intellectual sources of the Code in the peculiarities of Llewellyn's personality' and in the history of his contribution to the decade-long drafting process of the U.C.C.