University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law 9-1-2013 U.C.C. Article 9, Filing-Based Authority, and Fundamental Property Principles: A Reply to Professor Plank Steven L. Harris Chicago-Kent Collegel of Law Charles W. Mooney Jr. University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship Part of the Law Commons Repository Citation Harris, Steven L. and Mooney, Charles W. Jr., "U.C.C. Article 9, Filing-Based Authority, and Fundamental Property Principles: A Reply to Professor Plank" (2013). Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law. 1014. https://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/faculty_scholarship/1014 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Scholarship at Penn Law by an authorized administrator of Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 3058-182-02Harris-1pass-r02.3d Pages: [1–14] Date: [November 4, 2013] Time: [19:37] U.C.C. Article 9, Filing-Based Authority, and Fundamental Property Principles: A Reply to Professor Plank By Steven L. Harris and Charles W. Mooney, Jr.* Uniform Commercial Code Article 9 generally follows the common-law principle that one cannot give rights in property that one does not have (nemo dat quod non habet). In many circumstances, however, Article 9’s priority rules, including its rule awarding priority to the first security interest that is perfected or as to which a financ- ing statement has been filed, trump nemo dat and enable a debtor to grant a senior security interest in property that the debtor previously had encumbered.