In the United States, a Uniform Act is a proposed state law drafted by the U.S. Uniform Law Commission (ULC) and approved by its sponsor, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL).
Federalism in the United States under the Constitution grants only limited lawmaking power to the federal government, because in U.S. federalism, the states are regarded as the plenary sovereigns. Under the Tenth Amendment, all powers not explicitly granted to the federal government in the Constitution, or forbidden by it to the states, are reserved to the governments of the separate states or to the people. Therefore the states are free to enact their own unique laws on anything not within the purview of federal preemption. At the same time, in certain areas of law that are regularly litigated across state lines, it is desirable to have a predictable and relatively uniform set of laws in each state. Therefore, the states have passed laws dealing with a variety of legal issues that are identical or very similar in terms of their content. These are known as "Uniform Acts."
Such laws are distinct from interstate compacts.
Read more about Uniform Act: Drafting
Famous quotes containing the words uniform and/or act:
“Thus for each blunt-faced ignorant one
The great grey rigid uniform combined
Safety with virtue of the sun.
Thus concepts linked like chainmail in the mind.”
—Thom Gunn (b. 1929)
“There is a distinction to be drawn between true collectors and accumulators. Collectors are discriminating; accumulators act at random. The Collyer brothers, who died among the tons of newspapers and trash with which they filled every cubic foot of their house so that they could scarcely move, were a classic example of accumulators, but there are many of us whose houses are filled with all manner of things that we “can’t bear to throw away.””
—Russell Lynes (1910–1991)