January 2021 Council Meeting Updates
At its meeting on January 21 and 22, 2021, the ALI Council reviewed and discussed Council Drafts and approved drafts and portions of drafts as listed below.
The American Law Institute and the U.S. Supreme Court, Revisited
In my Winter 2016 Director’s Letter, I looked at the U.S. Supreme Court’s use of ALI materials during the 2013 to 2015 Terms, as part of an effort to examine how the ALI’s influence extends beyond the state courts and affects the development of federal law. Now that four years have passed since my last analysis of the Supreme Court’s use of ALI materials and several new Justices have joined the Court, revisiting this topic seems worthwhile.
Legal Infrastructure and the Forgotten Story of the Restatements
This essay is about the importance and value of building shared “legal infrastructure,” which is a term coined by the eminent economist and law professor Gillian Hadfield in her book, “Rules for a Flat World (2017).”
October 2020 Council Meeting Updates
At its meetings on October 13 and October 22-23, 2020, the Council reviewed and discussed Council Drafts of seven projects and approved drafts and portions of drafts.
Restatements: Views of a Founding Father
On June 30, 1923, William Draper Lewis addressed a gathering of the Maryland State Bar Association at Atlantic City, New Jersey. His speech was entitled, “The Work of The American Law Institute.”
ALI’s Contributions in a Time of Crisis
This year has been an extraordinarily difficult one. We are ensnarled in a pandemic that has caused a staggeringly large number of deaths and deep suffering and has laid bare appalling inequities, particularly ones based on race. The brutal killing of George Floyd on May 25 in Minneapolis has shaken our country to the core.
Coping With COVID: How the Courts are Preserving Access to Justice
The American Law Institute has partnered with the Bolch Judicial Institute of Duke Law School to produce the podcast and video series “Coping with COVID.” The first episode in the series is now available on the ALI podcast Reasonably Speaking, or may be watched as a video hosted by the Bolch Institute.
Restatement to the Rescue: 20-Year-Old Treatise May Help Ease Work-at-Home Privilege Problems
In a time of crisis, thoughtful lawyers look for ways to apply pre-existing authority to evolving situations. Since so many lawyers and clients are now communicating with each other from their homes, the COVID-19 pandemic presents such a time with respect to the protection of attorney-client privilege.
A Landmark in the Field of U.S. International Arbitration Law
In a recent column published in the New York Law Journal, Hughes Hubbard & Reed partner John Fellas describes the forthcoming Restatement of the Law, The U.S. Law of International Commercial and Investor–State Arbitration, as “a landmark in the field of U.S. international arbitration law that displays all the characteristics of the exemplary Restatement.”
When Legislatures and Agencies Rely on Restatements of the Law
The ALI has been keeping tabs on judicial citations to Restatements of the Law since the early days. At the 1937 Annual Meeting, for instance, Herbert Goodrich reported that as of that time, “there were 459 citations by the Federal Courts, [and] 3023 by the state courts, making a total of 3482 court citations.”