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Markets And Law Reform: The Tension Between Uniformity And Idealism, James C. Smith

Scholarly Works

The most ambitious effort at uniform property legislation ever launched was the Uniform Land Transactions Act (“ULTA”) and its companion, the Uniform Simplification of Land Transfers Act (“USLTA”). Both Acts, however, met with singular failure in the sense of uniform legislative shunning and have not substantially influenced judges in their lawmaking roles. In published opinions, very few courts have relied upon the ULTA or USLTA positions for analogous support.

Why did a single state legislature, somewhere in America, not pass at least one of the Acts? We cannot tell for sure why the legislatures eschewed the USLTA and the ULTA. …