Teaching Again . . . and Thinking about Goods

We started up again this week, so I am once again having the pleasure of introducing students to the glorious realm of contracts law.  Today, we will be delving into Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code for the first time, starting with concepts like “goods” and “merchants.”  I use Blum’s Examples and Explanations as a supplement to the cases I use with my students.  He has a series of questions about whether various transactions are sales of goods.  One involves the sale of a cow.  

I have a fantasy Socratic exchange about this example:

Me: Is a cow a good?
Student: Yes, it is a good.
Me: How do you know that a cow is a good?
Student: A cow is a good because UCC §2-105 defines “goods” to include all things moveable at the time identified for sale.  It also specifies that the unborn young of animals are goods, so it follows a fortiori that the animals themselves also must be goods.
Me: Interesting, but the answer I was looking for was “because it moooooooooves.”

Blum then moves on to more difficult examples involving hybrid contracts.  The Contracts Listserv has been hopping with discussion of this very topic.  I remain puzzled by the preference for the preponderant purpose test.  As I argued here, the gravamen of the action test makes far more sense to me.