71 CBLJ 81

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THE MANY FUTURES OF SECURED TRANSACTIONS LAW

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Roderick J. Wood

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ABSTRACT 

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The future is both unknown and unknowable. We do not have the means to predict future advances in knowledge, technology and innovation, and the past does not provide a dependable guide on these matters. But the past offers useful insights about the forces that have shaped secured transactions law. We can identify these influences and ask ourselves how things might change if they sharply grew or weakened or if they produced a less disruptive evolution in the law. The future is a constellation of possibilities. This article considers the many futures of secured transactions law under three broad headings — the death of secured transactions law, secured transactions law as Leviathan, and the organic evolution of secured transactions law. Although the arrow of time points forward, we cannot predict its path. The best we can do is to hazard a guess about how the world might look if certain features or trends that we see today collapse, accelerate, or evolve.

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Prophecies are really about now...There is no future. There are many possibilities, but we do not know which one we are going to have.

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Margaret Atwood

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[T]he direction of change is unknowable except from a vantage point safely in the future.

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Grant Gilmore

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