Negotiable Instruments (LAW-616-001)
Effross
Meets: 01:00 PM - 02:20 PM (MW) - Room 601
Enrolled: 19 / Limit: 45
Notices
Please See Textbooks, First Class Readings and Attendance Policy, below.
Description
On its most basic level, this course analyzes and applies the rules governing the “payment systems” of negotiable instruments, funds transfers, and credit cards.
We will focus primarily on the processes by which a party’s paper or electronic promise (note) or order (draft) to pay money can be acquired– by gift, purchase, fraud, theft, or windfall– by subsequent parties in turn, and what the respective rights and liabilities of the parties are in such situations. Almost immediately, for instance, we will be discussing practical concerns– a number of which are unfamiliar even to many lawyers– about drafting, indorsing, and depositing checks.
Practical themes of the course include: the identifying characteristics of notes and drafts; the non-colloquial definitions of “signature” and “forgery” under the Uniform Commercial Code; the liability of employers for negotiable-instruments-related fraud by their employees; the role of banks in honoring and dishonoring checks; and the ways in which the Code treats negotiable instruments both as contracts and as pieces of personal property.
On a more general level, we will work extensively with many different sections of Articles 3, 4, and 4A of the Uniform Commercial Code. This brightly-lit legal landscape, marked by centuries-old pathways of practice, contains few places for the shadows of ambiguity to lurk. Many students find a refreshing precision in the elements of the Code, and a sense of satisfaction in mastering the interpretation and interaction of these provisions. Under the Code, as in chess, complex situations can easily emerge from a limited number of pieces and rules; and, as in chess, there exist strategies to evaluate, analyze, and resolve even the most complicated of these situations. This course helps students develop skill in identifying and applying such statutory strategies.
Finally, this course examines the ways in which commercial practice and the Code have evolved, and explores the application of existing laws to the new technological systems of debit cards and stored-value cards.
This course does not require any previous knowledge of, or experience with, business or business law. The Sales and Secured Transactions course(s), which address other Articles of the Uniform Commercial Code, are not prerequisites for Negotiable Instruments.
Textbooks and Other Materials
The textbook information on this page was provided by the instructor. Students should use this information when considering purchases from the AU Campus Store or other vendors. Students may check to determine if books are currently available for purchase online.
BOOKS
Nickles, Matheson & Adams Modern Commercial Paper 0-314-03240-1 West
Brook, Payment Systems: Examples and Explanations 3rd ed. 2007 Aspen 0-7355-62423
Selected Commercial Statutes 2007 West 0-314-18001X (10-digit); 978-0-314-180018 (13-digit)
First Class Readings
First Assignment
For our first class session (Monday, August 20), please pick up the Course Memorandum, Handout 1, and Syllabus #1 (available outside room 475, beginning on August 13), and read the first two of these documents and the material listed under Section 1A of Syllabus #1.
Attendance Policy
Students are required to attend 75% of regularly scheduled classes (i.e., classes held as scheduled at 1:00 - 2:20 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays and our sessions held during the law school’s official make-up days) in order to be permitted to take the final examination.