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Frank Sullivan, Jr., Professor of Practice at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law and an Indiana University Bicentennial Professor, has been appointed to serve as a member of the Joint Drafting Committee on the Uniform Commercial Code and Emerging Technologies. Sullivan has been a member of the McKinney faculty since 2012 where he teaches business and commercial law courses, including courses in the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).

The UCC is a comprehensive modernization of various statutes relating to commercial transactions including sales, leases, negotiable instruments, bank deposits and collections, funds transfers, letters of credit, bulk sales, documents of title, investment securities, and secured transactions. The UCC, enacted in every state, has been updated many times to keep the law up-to-date with modern business practices.

The Drafting Committee on the UCC and Emerging Technologies, formed jointly with members from the American Law Institute (ALI) and the Uniform Law Commission (ULC), is drafting amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code to accommodate emerging technological developments. The committee is addressing, among other issues, distributed ledger technology, virtual currency, electronic notes and drafts, other digital assets, payments, and bundled transactions.

The work of the drafting committee can be found on the ULC website here. The committee is expected to present a draft for a first reading at the ULC’s annual meeting in July.  Revisions to the UCC are expected to be completed in 2022.

Sullivan was a Justice of the Indiana Supreme Court from 1993 to 2012. He has been a uniform law commissioner representing Indiana since 2012 and is also an elected member of the American Law Institute. As a member of the Indiana Business Law Survey Commission (BLSC), a body established by the Legislature to make recommendations for improvements to the state’s business statutes, he led a task force that drafted a major consolidation and harmonization of provisions in five Indiana business entity statutes. This legislation, which utilized ULC materials, was enacted in 2017.

Founded in 1892, the Uniform Law Commission is an organization of more than 350 practicing attorneys, judges, law professors, legislators and other state officials - all lawyers. Commissioners to the ULC are appointed by every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to draft and promote enactment of uniform laws - laws designed to solve problems common to all the states. Commissioners donate their time as a pro bono public service.  Since its inception in 1892, the ULC has promulgated more than 300 acts, many of which have been adopted in Indiana including the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, Uniform Commercial Code, Uniform Partnership Act, Uniform Securities Act, Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act, Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, and Uniform Interstate Family Support Act.