Vol 7 No 1 - Roger Williams University School of Law

the debate has centered on whether to enact UCITA as a whole,enact it with minor amendments, or (at the other extreme) kill thelegislation.The time has come to reevaluate UCITA. It does not makesense to ask what amendments to isolated provisions might makeit “sell” to different constituencies. UCITA contains a number ofcontroversial provisions on which consensus can never beachieved, and the opposition will remain.5 Although it isundoubtedly possible to enact a law about which there is somecontroversy, the fact that UCITA contains so many controversialprovisions compounds the difficulties of enactment. Rather thanfocusing on the controversial provisions and how they can beamended to satisfy the opponents, the focus might better be placedon what positive can be gleaned and saved from UCITA.UCITA stands as a potential roadmap outlining the issues ofimportance for future development, debate and resolution; guidingdevelopments in other venues (such as international law-makingvenues); or identifying those points on which there is sufficientagreement that legislative enactment of those provisions could beachieved. UCITA was (and is) an extremely ambitious project thatinvites and merits intense scrutiny and study. Such a detailedanalysis, however, is beyond the scope of this much more limitedendeavor—to permit someone who was at many stages deeplyinvolved in the process the luxury of ruminating over what hastranspired. I am one who believes that the lessons to be learnedfrom UCITA (and the process by which it was drafted) are worthfar more than its provisions themselves. These lessons may proveextremely valuable to those who toil in the field of legislativereform, both domestically and internationally.idea submission provisions) and section 816 (clarifying limitations on self-help). SeeAmendments to the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (ratified Aug. 4,2000), available at http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ucita/ucitaAMD.htm (last visitedOct. 8, 2001); Amendments to Sections 605 and 816 of the Uniform ComputerInformation Transactions Act (as Last Revised in 2000), available athttp://www.ucitaonline.com/docs/0101a.htm (last visited Oct. 8, 2001); AmendmentsApproved by NCCUSL Executive Committee Pending Ratification of the Conference(Feb. 2000), available at http://www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ucita/approveamend.htm(last visited Oct. 8, 2001).5. An example of this may be § 209, the choice of law provisions. There has beenan inability to reach consensus on them in other fora such as the Hague Conference onPrivate International Law. See Paul Hofheinz, Birth Pangs For Web Treaty SeemEndless, Wall St. J., Aug. 16, 2001, at A11. In UCITA, the real problem comes from thebundling together of many controversial issues such as this into one package.