615
Samuel Williston, Professor of Law transfer by warehouse receipts and bills
of lading. In regard to some matters the act aroused a considerable difference of opinion, especially in regard to the propriety of many of the sections relat
ing to documents of title, in regard to the broad definition of value (in connec
tion with the phrases “purchase for
coming thus the law of the land. So diverse were the older authorities in the various states upon this point that here
certainly was a case where without uni form legislation that uniformity which is so desirable in commercial matters
could never have been attained. In no other way could the general law of the United States have been made to con
regard to the propriety of allowing a buyer to rescind an executed sale for a
form to the best commercial usage. Professor Williston came into the teaching of law by the case method
breach of warranty.
Some able lawyers
before it had been worked out to the
opposed the provisions of the Act on these points. In 1904 the Commissioners for Uni form State Laws entrusted to Professor Williston and to Barry Mohun, Esq., the drafting of an act to codify the Law of Warehouse Receipts, and three succes sive drafts were prepared and considered in the same way as the drafts of the Sales Act, and adopted and recommended for passage in final form in 1906. In that year the subject of bills of lading also was
practicable system it now is. The first of the case books were becoming obso
value,” and “purchaser for value"), and in
lete, as the art of teaching by cases had developed in a way which the founders of the method could never
have anticipated a priori. His first work in case book making was the editing of an additional volume to go with Langdell's Cases on Contracts (1894). The necessity for this was plain,
as Langdell never went beyond the mere elements of the subject, finding in them
submitted to him, and five drafts were
all the material needed for a year's dis
prepared and submitted for criticism in the same way as the preceding acts. Spe cial meetings of shippers, bankers and
cussion; but Professor Williston saw, as others have seen since, that it will not do when you are purporting to train young men to practice law not to give
carriers also considered this act, which
was finally accepted and recommended for passage by the Conference in 1909.
During the same period, the draftsman had in hand an act to make uniform the Law of Stock Transfers. Three tenta tive drafts of this act were prepared, and this also was adopted and recom
them as wide a range of information as is consistent with a thorough discussion of the principles involved. At about the same time
his
Cases
on
Sales
(1894) was brought out, in view of the same necessity of making this new idea workable. The second edition of
mended for passage by the Conference
the Cases on Contracts (1903) and the
in 1909.
second edition of the Cases on Sales (1905)
The adoption of the principle of nego tiability under careful limitations for warehouse receipts, bills of lading and stock certificates, is perhaps the most striking single feature of the legislation in
are now currently used in most of the
schools which have adopted the Harvard system. Like most of Williston's work, they represent the golden mean. They
have large divisions so that the student
question. These acts are being adopted
may know what he is studying, but the
generally throughout the country, so that this principle of negotiability is be
subdivision is left to the student. There is a painstaking collection of cases accord
