Commercial Law Intersections

Modern commercial law does not operate in isolation. The rules governing secured transactions, sales, negotiable instruments, and other commercial dealings increasingly intersect with—and are sometimes contradicted by—regulations from other legal domains, including financial regulation, consumer protection law, and insolvency law. This Article examines a phenomenon we term 'commercial law intersections': situations where legal rules from different regulatory regimes simultaneously apply to the same transaction or asset, creating potential conflicts, gaps, or inefficiencies. Through detailed analysis of multiple case studies, we demonstrate how the proliferation of specialized regulatory frameworks has created coordination failures that undermine legal certainty and increase transaction costs. We examine intersections between commercial law and prudential regulation in the context of collateral rules, between commercial law and insolvency law in priority disputes, and between Article 9 of the UCC and various asset-specific registration regimes. Our analysis reveals systematic patterns in how these coordination failures arise and persist. We show that legal actors—including legislators, regulators, and courts—often fail to consider how their rules interact with established commercial law frameworks, leading to unintended consequences. We also demonstrate how private parties attempt to navigate these intersections through contractual arrangements, but explain why private ordering alone cannot resolve the underlying legal incoherence. The Article concludes by proposing institutional reforms and interpretive techniques that could improve coordination across legal domains. We argue for greater dialogue between commercial law and regulatory specialists, for legislative processes that assess intersectional effects, and for judicial doctrines that promote coherent interpretation across related legal frameworks.