At its January 2019 Council meeting, The American Law Institute Council voted to launch four new projects: Restatement of the Law, Corporate Governance, and three Torts projects, which will complete the ongoing Restatement Third, Torts. The three Torts projects are Defamation and Privacy, Remedies, and Concluding Provisions.

Restatement of the Law, Corporate Governance will be led by Reporter Edward Rock, the Martin Lipton Professor of Law at NYU School of Law. The project will follow ALI’s Restatement framework, set forth when ALI was founded nearly a century ago.

The Institute first tackled the subject of corporate governance more than 25 years ago in Principles of the Law, Corporate Governance: Analysis and Recommendations. Although it provided valuable guidance in a new and unfamiliar area of law at the time, this area has evolved quite a bit in the intervening decades. This project will examine the state of the law today and reflect it in the Restatement.

The three new Torts Restatements will complete the revision of the Restatement Second of Torts began in the early 1990s. Portions of the Restatement Second have been superseded by the Restatement Third of Torts: Products Liability, Apportionment of Liability, and Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm. Economic Harm was approved by ALI members at the 2018 Annual Meeting, and will be published later this year. Two additional torts categories are being covered in current projects: Intentional Torts and Property Torts.

Torts: Defamation and Privacy will address torts dealing with personal and business reputation and dignity, including defamation, business disparagement, and rights of privacy. Among other issues, the updates will cover the substantial body of new issues relating to the internet. The Reporters will be Lyrissa Lidsky, dean of the University of Missouri School of Law, and Robert C. Post of Yale Law School.

Torts: Remedies will address tort damages and other remedies. It will include issues related to identifying the types of recoverable damages, such as past and future lost wages, medical expenses, disfigurement, and pain and suffering, as well as measuring damages, including discounting future earnings to present value, the effect of taxes, and structured settlements. The Reporter will be Douglas Laycock of The University of Texas at Austin School of Law and the University of Virginia School of Law.

Torts: Concluding Provisions will address topics not covered in another part of the Restatement Third of Torts that either require updating since publication of the Restatement Second or were not previously addressed but should be covered in a modern torts Restatement. These topics will include medical liability and vicarious liability, among others. The Reporters will be Nora Freeman Engstrom of Stanford Law School, Michael D. Green of Wake Forest University School of Law, and William C. Powers, Jr. of The University of Texas at Austin School of Law. Mark Hall of Wake Forest University School of Law and School of Medicine has been named Associate Reporter.