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1 Alaska L.J. 1 (1963)

handle is hein.barjournals/alaskalj0001 and id is 1 raw text is: LAW NA Vol. I JANUARY, 1963 No. I ALASKA STA'1JTES Revision of Alaska Law By JANE F. ASHER Revisor of Statutes A revision of Alaska law, as found in ACLA 1949 and all subsequent session laws through the 1962 legislative session, has been completed. This revision is contained in five volumes, is entitled Alaska Statutes, and is the result of five years of planning and work. There are some differences and many ad- vantages in using the Alaska Statutes as compared with ACLA 1949 and the session laws. The purpose of this article is to ac- quaint you with the format and use of the Alaska Statutes in order that it may be used im- mediately with maximum effi- ciency. Bulk Formal Revision The bulk formal revision of Alaska law which resulted in the Alaska Statutes was a revision of the entire body of statutory law consisting of col- lecting the laws according to subject matter and arranging them in a logical system of positive law without making substantive changes such as correcting legislative e r r o r s, clarifying the law or trying to make it more workable. Speci- fically, the ends sought were to: (1) determine what statutes were in effect by eliminating the obsolete, unconstitutional, and unnecessary sections of the law; (2) organize the live law ac- cording to subject matter into a logical classification system of titles, chapters, and sections; (3) restate the law in clear and simple language with uni- formity of expression, capitali- zation, spelling and punctua- tion, and with redundancies re- moved, misspelled words cor- rected, poor grammar recon- structed, and frequently used (Continued on Page 2) Jane F. Asher ABOUT THE AUTHOR- Jane F. Asher is a graduate of the Tulane School of Law and a member of the Louisiana and Alaska bars and the American Bar Association. She was law clerk for Judge Raymond Kelly, District Court for the Territory of Alaska in 1957. She then be- came attorney for the Veter- ans Affairs Commission and in 1959 was appointed an Assist- ant Attorney General. She joined the staff of the Legisla- tive Council as Revisor of Stat- utes in 1960. ALASKA UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE -a preliminary look at this comprehensive law By JAMES N. WANAMAXER This article gives a brief historical background of the enact- ment of the Uniform Commercial Code in Alaska and other states, compares the Code with Alaska's former commercial laws, cites the laws repealed by the Code and outlines some of the important changes that are now effective. zlli1orival DuU4KlgOUlI aIU Imu need for the Code Alaska now stands with seven- teen other states (Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Kentucky, Con- necticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Wyoming, Arkan- sas, New Mexico, Ohio, Oregon, Oklahoma, Illinois, New Jersey, Georgia, Michigan and New York) which have adopted the U n i f o r m Commercial Code. Pennsylvania was the first state to enact the Code having done so in 1954. In Alaska, the Code was in- troduced in the First Session of the Second Legislature but no action on it was taken then. It was not until the Second Session that it was enacted becoming law at midnight, December 31, 1962 (See Ch. 114, SLA; AS 45.05). Perhaps the primary reason underlying the introduction and passage of the Uniform Com- mercial Code was the antiquity and uncertainty of the existing commercial laws. Alaska's com- mercial law was chiefly com- prised of the following uniform acts: the Uniform Sales Act, (1906) (1913); the Uniform Conditional Sales Act, (1918) (1919); the Uniform Negotiable Instruments Act, (1896) (1913); the Uniform Warehouse Re- ceipts Act, (1906 (1913); the Uniform Trust Receipts Law, (1933) (1951); the Uniform Stock Transfer Act, (1909) (1959); and the Uniform Bills of Lading Act, (1909) (1913). (The dates are respectively the date of adoption by the Com- missioners on Uniform State Laws and the date enacted in Alaska.) As you will note from the above dates, most of these acts were drafted near the turn of century. In the intervening years many new commercial practices have arisen which were then en- tirely unknown. Because these acts were recommended and enacted in a piecemeal fashion, there are numerous areas of overlapping and duplication, and in some cases inconsistency, in dealing with negotiable instru- ments, bills of lading, ware- house receipts, stock transfers, sales and trust receipts. Further, there have been many conflicting interpretations of these old uniform laws, thus creating a very real problem of finding the controlling case law applicable to any particular problem. For instance, as many as eighty sections of the N.I.L. have different meanings in vari- ous states because of conflicting court decisions. Commercial law has grown so complex and so inadequate in recent year that even practicing lawyers are con- fused. The Illinois and Chicago Bar Associations, in their re- port urging enactment of the Uniform Commeercial C o d e, made the following comment: We think, finally, that the (Continued on Page 2)

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