Commercial law governs the broad areas of business, commerce, and consumer transactions. Specific law has developed in a number of commercial fields. These include:

• Banking
  Banks and bank accounts are regulated by both state and federal statutory law. Bank accounts may be established by national and state chartered banks and savings associations. All are regulated by the law under which they were established.
• Bankruptcy
  Bankruptcy law provides for the development of a plan that allows a debtor, who is unable to pay his creditors, to resolve his debts through the division of his assets among his creditors. This supervised division also allows the interests of all creditors to be treated with some measure of equality. Certain bankruptcy proceedings allow a debtor to stay in business and use revenue generated to resolve his or her debts. An additional purpose of bankruptcy law is to allow certain debtors to free themselves (to be discharged) of the financial obligations they have accumulated, after their assets are distributed, even if their debts have not been paid infull.
• Consumer credit
  Credit allows consumers to finance transactions without having to pay the full cost of the merchandise at the time of the transaction. A common form of consumer credit is a credit card account issued by a financial institution. Merchants may also provide financing for products which they sell. Banks may directly finance purchases through loans and mortgages.
• Contracts
  Contracts are promises that the law will enforce. The law provides remedies if a promise is breached or recognizes the performance of a promise as a duty. Contracts arise when a duty does or may come into existence, because of a promise made by one of the parties. To be legally binding as a contract, a promise must be exchanged for adequate consideration. Adequate consideration is a benefit or detriment which a party receives which reasonably and fairly induces them to make the promise/contract. For example, promises that are purely gifts are not considered enforceable because the personal satisfaction the grantor of the promise may receive from the act of giving is normally not considered adequate consideration. Certain promises that are not considered contracts may, in limited circumstances, be enforced if one party has relied to his detriment on the assurances of the otherparty.
• Debtor and creditor
  Debtor-creditor law governs situations where one party is unable to pay a monetary debt to another. There are three types of creditors. First are those who have a lien have a charge against a particular piece of property. This property (or proceeds from its sale) must be used to satisfy the debt to the lien-creditor before it can be used to satisfy debts to other creditors.
• Landlord-tenant
  The basis of the legal relationship between a landlord and tenant is grounded in both contract and property law. The tenant has a property interest in the land (historically a non-freehold estate) for a given period of time. See State Property Statues (http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/state_statutes3.html#property). The length of the tenancy may be for a given period of time, for an indefinite period of time, (e.g., renewable/cancelable on a month to month basis), terminable at any time by either party (at will), or at sufferance if the agreement has been terminated and the tenant refuses to leave (holds over). See Restatement of The Law 2d Property: Landlord and Tenant § § 1.4-1.8 (http://www.ali.org/ali/proplt.htm). If the tenancy is tenancy for years or periodic the tenant has the right to possess the land, to restrict others (including the landlord) from entering upon it, and to sublease or assign the property. The landlord-tenant agreement may eliminate or limit these rights. The landlord-tenant agreement is normally embodied in a lease. The lease, though not historically or strictly a contract, may be subject to concepts embodied in contract law.
• Mortgages
  A mortgage involves the transfer of an interest in land as security for a loan or other obligation. It is the most common method of financing real estate transactions. The mortgagor is the party transferring the interest in land. The mortgage, usually a financial institution, is the provider of the loan or other interest given in exchange for the security interest. Normally, a mortgage is paid in installments that include both interest and a payment on the principle amount that was borrowed. Failure to make payments results in the foreclosure of the mortgage. Foreclosure allows the mortgagee to declare that the entire mortgage debt is due and must be paid immediately. This is accomplished through an acceleration clause in the mortgage. Failure to pay the mortgage debt once foreclosure of the land occurs leads to seizure of the security interest and it's sale to pay for any remaining mortgage debt. The foreclosure process depends on state law and the terms of the mortgage. The most common processes are court proceedings (judicial foreclosure) or grants of power to the mortgagee to sell the property (power of sale foreclosure). Many states regulate acceleration clauses and allow late payments to avoid foreclosure.
• Negotiable instruments
  Negotiable instruments are mainly governed by state statutory law. Every state has adopted Article 3 of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) (http://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/3/overview.html), with some modifications, as the law governing negotiable instruments. The UCC defines a negotiable instrument as an unconditioned writing that promises or orders the payment of a fixed amount of money. Drafts and notes are the two categories of instruments. A draft is an instruments that orders a payment to be made. An example is a check. A note is an instrument that promises that a payment will be made. Certificates of deposit (CD's) are notes. Drafts and notes are commonly used in business transactions to finance the movement of goods and to secure and distribute loans. To be considered negotiable an instrument must meet the requirements stated in Article 3. Negotiable instruments do not include money, payment orders governed by article 4A (fund transfers) or to securities governed by Article 8 (investment securities).
• Real estate transactions
  Real estate transactions are governed by a wide body of federal statutes and state statutory and common law. The requirements established by state law often differ significantly from one state to the next.
• Sales
  Transactions for the sale (and leasing) of goods is governed mainly by sales laws of each state.
• Secured transactions
  A security interest arises when in exchange for a loan a borrower agrees, in a security agreement, that the lender (the secured party) may take specified collateral owned by the borrower if he or she should default on the loan. A security interest also provides the secured party with the assurance that if the debtor should go bankrupt he or she may be able to recover the value of the loan by taking possession of the specified collateral instead of receiving only a portion of the borrowers property after it is divided among all creditors.