The Story of ALI

The American Law Institute was founded in 1923 in response to concerns that the body of American common law was both uncertain and complex. A group of prominent judges, lawyers, and academics formed the “Committee on the Establishment of a Permanent Organization for the Improvement of the Law” and published a report recommending that an organization be formed to improve the law and its administration. This led to the creation of ALI.

1923

President: George W. Wickersham Director: William Draper Lewis

Founding of The American Law Institute

In the early 1920’s, a group of prominent American judges, lawyers, and law professors formed “The Committee on the Establishment of a Permanent Organization for the Improvement of the Law,” led by Elihu Root, George Wickersham, and William Draper Lewis. The Committee reported to the members of the legal profession that the “law is unnecessarily uncertain and complex,” and as a result, there is a “general dissatisfaction with the administration of justice.”

According to the Committee, the law’s uncertainty stemmed in part from a lack of agreement on fundamental principles of the common law, while the law’s complexity was attributed to the numerous variations within different jurisdictions.

In order to remedy these issues, the Committee proposed the formation of The American Law Institute in order “to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work.”

We speak of the work which the organization should undertake as a restatement; its object should not only be to help make certain much that is now uncertain and to simplify unnecessary complexities but also to promote those changes which will tend better to adapt the laws to the needs of life.

From the Report of the Committee

One of the Committee’s suggestions was for a Restatement of the Law that “should not only be to help make certain much that is now uncertain and to simplify unnecessary complexities, but also to promote those changes which will tend better to adapt the laws to the needs of life.” A Restatement should be critical and constructive, and although largely based on statutes and decisions, “it should not be confined to examining and setting forth the law applicable to those situations which have been the subject of court action or statutory regulation, but should also take account of situations not yet discussed by courts or dealt with by legislatures….”

The Committee then recommended that the work be done by members that represent the profession as a whole. The diversity of voice, in all ways, would prove essential to the work that the Institute produces.

Based on the recommendation of the Committee, The American Law Institute was incorporated in 1923. That year, work began on the first four Restatements, covering the subjects of Agency, Conflict of Laws, Contracts, and Torts. Additional early leaders of ALI included William Howard Taft, Charles Evans Hughes, Learned Hand, and Benjamin Cardozo. ALI held its first Annual Meeting in February 1923.

1928

President: George W. Wickersham Director: William Draper Lewis

“A Permanent Organization for the Improvement of the Law”

In 1928, ALI Director William Draper Lewis submitted to the Executive Committee of ALI “The Future of the Institute: Report No. 1 on Things to be Considered and How We Should Proceed to Consider Them.” The report makes it clear that Lewis assumed and intended the Institute to be permanent.

In the below video, Nathan L. Hecht, former Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, explains common law and how it may change over time, necessitating future ALI work.

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Barely five years after its tentative founding and before a single volume of the first Restatement had been published in final form, Lewis told the Executive Committee that “I believe we all feel that the time has arrived when those of us who are primarily responsible for the guidance of the Institute should begin to give serious consideration to its future.”

Even more remarkably, he asserted with no sense of modesty or hesitation that “We find ourselves in the position of counselors and guides of an organization which is already recognized by the leaders of the bench and bar in the several states as, not only in name, but in fact the permanent agency through which the legal profession may perform its public obligation, to do constructive legal work for the improvement of law and its administration.”

Director Lewis (third from left) with ALI Advisers (date unknown)

1931

President: George W. Wickersham Director: William Draper Lewis

Tentative Draft Sales Reported

Although the Institute had yet to publish a Restatement, the volume of sales of Tentative Drafts and of the Code of Criminal Procedure reflected that the Institute’s work, even in its early stages, was regarded with respect by the legal community.

The preparation of an adequate Restatement of any Subject is a long and arduous task. There is no short cut.

ALI Director William Draper Lewis

1929 Annual Report

It was understood at this stage that drafts were tentative and not final. Nevertheless, lawyers were purchasing these drafts and using them in preparing briefs. Judges, particularly those in the higher courts, were also citing the Tentative Drafts. In addition to judicial and practical use of the drafts, the use of the Tentative Drafts by law school teachers continued to grow.

The number of drafts of each subject sold as of 1931 to members of the bar and to law schools is listed in the chart below from the ALI’s 1931 Annual Meeting Proceedings.

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1932

President: George W. Wickersham Director: William Draper Lewis

ALI’s First Restatement Is Published

In the video below, Liability Insurance project Reporter Tom Baker explains the various parts of a Restatement. Black letter, Comments, and Illustrations can all be seen even in the earliest draft of Contracts. Reporter’s (or Reporters’) Notes were included in the Appendix Volumes within the Restatement Second series.

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In 1923, work began on the first four Restatements, covering the subjects of Agency, Conflict of Laws, Contracts, and Torts.

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The first official text of these projects to be published was the Restatement of Contracts. Following the first draft that included one Chapter of Definitions and a second on Formation of Simple Contracts, the project produced 50 additional Preliminary Drafts and 17 Final Drafts, was discussed at eight Annual Meetings, and was approved at ALI’s 10th Annual Meeting.

Although not officially published until 1932, the great majority of the Restatement’s drafts were already being used by the courts, by practitioners, and in law schools for more than three years prior to beginning the work of the final revision.

In response to the demand for this Restatement, in September 1928, a revision of the first 177 Sections of the Restatement of Contracts was published as a Preliminary Official Draft. The Tentative Drafts, as well as the Preliminary Official Draft, were considered at conferences of the representatives of State Bar Association Cooperating Committees across the country.

1939

President: George Wharton Pepper Director: William Draper Lewis

Torts Published

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ALI began its work on Torts in June 1923. In 1939, the Institute published the fourth volume of Restatement of the Law, Torts, marking the completion of this 16-year endeavor.

During the project’s life cycle, the editorial organization created to deal with the subject increased from one to five groups. In the year leading up to the final Annual Meeting vote, the five groups working on Torts held 16 conferences on 58 conference days. In all, 145 Preliminary Drafts were considered. Twenty-seven Tentative and Proposed Final Drafts were reviewed and considered by the Council and membership.

The Restatement of Torts very quickly became a popular secondary resource for the courts and legal profession across the country. By 1950, the appellate courts had cited this work more than 4,600 times. In his 1950 Annual Meeting address to the membership, Director Herbert Goodrich highlighted a study of the Restatement of Torts as it had been applied by the highest court in Pennsylvania:

There has been a very interesting study made by a law student of the University of Pennsylvania who has looked over the some five hundred and fifty-three instances in which the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has cited and worked with the Restatement of Torts. This student finds—and here is the interesting quotation with which he starts his paper—“To the extent that past cases are in conflict with the view of Section 339 of the Restatement of Torts which we have adopted, they are no longer authority.”

Then the student goes on to examine the various instances in which the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has used the Restatement of Torts, and what it has done with it. His conclusion is that the Restatement has become primary authority in the Supreme Court of that state.

The Institute later revisited the subject of Torts. The first Preliminary Draft of the Restatement Second of Torts was prepared in 1955.

1945

President: George Wharton Pepper Director: William Draper Lewis

Annual Meeting Cancelled

In 1945, due to World War II, the Institute’s Executive Committee decided to not hold an Annual Meeting.

In his Annual Report, Director Lewis explains this decision: “It is not that there are no matters of importance which could be taken up at such a meeting; but our war conditions and the statement of James F. Byrnes rightly prohibits any large meeting not directly connected with the war effort.” The war not only affected ALI's meetings but its publication schedule as well. The publication of Volumes 4 and 5 of the Restatement of Property was delayed due to paper shortage across the country.

1945

President: George Wharton Pepper Director: William Draper Lewis

ALI and ‘Humanity’s Magna Carta’

One of the lesser-known, but important and influential, projects undertaken by The American Law Institute is the Statement of Essential Human Rights. In the spring of 1941, William Draper Lewis, Director of the Institute, and Warren A. Seavey, Reporter for the Restatements of Agency, Judgments, Restitution, and Torts, began a correspondence that would span four years.

In these letters, they discussed their shared hope for an end to World War II and the “destruction of Hitlerism.” They also discussed the issue of Germany’s future, as well as the broader question of what role the United States should take in the postwar world. In a memorandum issued in 1941, an initial project plan was proposed.

Their discussions led Lewis and Seavey to a shared belief that a just and permanent peace required the recognition of basic human rights, and that the Institute should draft a Statement of Essential Human Rights. Funded by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, a drafting committee was formed, with representatives from Britain, Canada, China, France, pre-Nazi Germany, India, Italy, Latin America, Poland, Soviet Russia, Spain, and Syria. Its goal was to define the indispensable human rights in terms that would be acceptable to all nations.

Committee members researched the constitutions of other countries and other primary documents relating to individual rights. Throughout the drafting process, Lewis and Seavey disagreed passionately about which human rights should be classified as fundamental. Ultimately they were unable to come to an agreement on the topic.

The Statement was never presented to the ALI membership for a vote, as the ALI Council did not feel that it was advisable for the Institute to draft an international bill of rights. The Council did direct that copies of the committee’s report be distributed to ALI members in 1944.

In 1946, John P. Humphrey was appointed as the first Director of the Human Rights Division in the United Nations Secretariat, and one of his first undertakings was to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In his 1984 memoir Human Rights and the United Nations: A Great Adventure, he says that “the best of the texts from which I worked was the one prepared by the American Law Institute, and I borrowed freely from it.”

UN Press Conference on Declaration of Human Rights

Press Conference on Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt, Chairman of Human Rights Commission, and Dr. Charles Malik, Chairman of the General Assembly’s Third Committee (second from right), during press conference after the completion of the Declaration of Human Rights. December 7, 1948, Paris, France (Credit: UN Photo).

After its adoption in 1948, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights went on to become the best-known and most-cited human-rights document in the world. It has been translated into over 500 languages and has been incorporated into the constitutions of many countries to lay a foundation for human rights.

Eleanor Roosevelt holding a Universal Declaration of Human Rights poster in English. [Exact date unknown], United Nations (Lake Success), New York

In her 2003 Annual Dinner speech to the ALI membership, Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, thanked the Institute for its “pioneering and prophetic work” on the Statement of Essential Human Rights.

“The Statement broke new ground in identifying not only civil and political liberties, but also education, food, housing, and social security as human rights, and through its broad membership—from China, the Arab world, India, and Latin America—it anticipated and answered later critics who would claim that human rights are a product of western culture and history. That Statement is something I will come back to, because we need that approach now more than ever, at the start of this new century.”

The history of the Statement of Essential Human Rights demonstrates that the Institute can be influential in the ideas it disseminates, even if it does not always take an official position with the requisite concurrence of both the Council and the members.

Learn more about ALI’s story of assembling the Statement from former ALI President Michael Traynor.

1947

President: Harrison Tweed Director: Herbert F. Goodrich

ALI-ABA Is Born

In the aftermath of another world war, at a time when lawyers were returning to work, they found themselves confronted with not only the difficulties of assimilating back into civilian life, but the added challenge of needing to make up for the gaps in their legal knowledge–a result of advancements that had been made during their absence. In light of these deficiencies, and the growing demand for a more structured way to ensure needs were met, the continuing education of the bar became a matter of first importance to the legal profession.

In 1947, the American Bar Association asked ALI to undertake a national program of continuing education of the bar. The Institute immediately saw the importance of this request and agreed to the task. As a result, the effort that the ABA initiated and ALI undertook became ALI-ABA — The American Law Institute-American Bar Association Committee on Continuing Professional Education.

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ALI-ABA would assist in the creation of state and local sponsoring agencies (with the help of bar associations, law schools, and other lawyer groups), supply literature and “know how” for lectures, and provide program panelists.

In its first year of operation, following the policy of working with local agencies of the bar, ALI-ABA organized Continuing Legal Education (CLE) lectures in 30 states.

From 1947 to 1968, ALI-ABA produced 654 courses attended by 70,159 lawyers; published 83 titles by 121 authors, some in multi-editions; and sold 499,277 books. The first edition of The Practical Lawyer (still published today) was available in 1955. For 65 years, ALI-ABA would continue to provide thousands of legal seminars and publications to lawyers across the country. In 2012, ALl and the ABA amicably ended their 65-year collaboration in continuing legal education known as ALI-ABA, with each entity moving forward on its own to produce CLE.

1952

President: Harrison Tweed Director: Herbert F. Goodrich

Work on Restatement Second Begins

In the Institute’s 1952 Annual Report, Director Goodrich spoke on the importance of continuing work on Restatements.

“Into the Restatement project went a great deal of money. Into this work also went days, months and years of labor by a great many people. That labor will never be lost. But the life of law books is such in this day and age that unless a book, no matter how authoritative, is constantly looked over for necessary revision, it soon becomes obsolete. By obsolete it is not meant that what was said is necessarily no longer the law.

Some legal principles change very slowly. But without fresh assurance of continuous examination, the user can never depend upon the current authenticity of a statement. Even more he is in danger of losing out on some new development or ramification of an old principle. These developments are important in many instances. The Restatement, if it is to speak contemporaneously, must include them. So, five years after our previous re-examination we shall go to work again.”

The Restatement Second includes the following subjects: Agency, Conflict of Laws, Contracts, Foreign Relations Law of the United States, Judgments, Property (Landlord and Tenant), Torts, and Trusts.

The first subjects completed in the Restatement Second were Agency and Trusts. Both were approved at the 1957 Annual Meeting. Agency Second was published in 1958. Trusts Second was published in 1959.

The Editorial Board for the Restatement Second—R. Ammi Cutter, Edwin D. Dickinson, Learned Hand, and ALI’s President and Director—had the responsibility of making decisions on matters of form and style to present the work in the best way possible.

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As the first publication in the Restatement Second series, Agency Second was the Institute’s first effort to make an enlarged version and set the standard for the second edition Restatements to follow. “We are changing the size of the pages, quality of paper, the appearance of the binding. In other words, the Second Agency will be a new book.” – 1958 Annual Report from Director Goodrich

Another modification introduced in the Restatement Second series was the development of Reporter’s Notes. Unlike the black letter, and Comments (including Illustrations), the Reporter’s (or Reporters’) Notes are regarded as the work of the Reporter (or Reporters). Reporter’s Notes are not approved by ALI members. Nevertheless, they are submitted for review together with the other components of the Section to which they pertain. Reporter’s Notes set forth and discuss the legal and other sources relied upon by the Reporter(s) in formulating the black letter and Comment and enable the reader better to evaluate these formulations; they also provide avenues for additional research. In addition, the Notes furnish a vehicle for the Reporter(s) to convey views not necessarily those of the Institute and to suggest related areas for investigation that may be too peripheral for treatment in the black letter or Comments. Reporter’s Notes contain lucid analyses of hard problems and the wealth of citations will lead the researchers to case material otherwise hard to find.

The Restatement Second also included court citations to the Restatement First, categorized by date.

1952

President: Harrison Tweed Director: Herbert F. Goodrich

The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC)

The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) is a comprehensive set of laws governing commercial transactions in the United States. It is a uniform code addressed to legislatures with a view toward legislative enactment and written in prescriptive statutory language. The UCC is a modernization of various statutes relating to commercial transactions including sales, leases, negotiable instruments, bank deposits and collections, funds transfers, letters of credit, bulk sales, documents of title, investment securities, and secured transactions.

Learn how the UCC has promoted safe, predictable, reliable commerce for businesses and consumers throughout the United States in the video below.

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The UCC is a joint project of the Uniform Law Commission (ULC) and The American Law Institute. In 1942, ALI accepted an invitation from the ULC to undertake this massive project. ALI named Karl Llewellyn Chief Reporter and Soia Mentschikoff Assistant Reporter. For the next 10 years, the two organizations worked together to produce the first volume. Published in 1952, the UCC was ALI’s first publication post-WWII.

Because the UCC has been universally adopted, businesses can enter into contracts with confidence that the terms will be enforced in the same way by the courts of every American jurisdiction. The resulting certainty of business relationships allows businesses to grow and the American economy to thrive. For this reason, the UCC has been called “the backbone of American commerce.”

Updates to the UCC were presented to the membership for vote at ALI's 2018 Annual Meeting.

Updated regularly, the UCC is maintained by the Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code (PEB). The PEB, a joint committee of ALI and the Uniform Law Commission, discourages nonuniform amendments or additions to the UCC by the states, assists in attaining and maintaining uniformity in state statutes governing commercial transactions, and monitors the law of commercial transactions for needed modernization or other improvement.

Updates to the UCC were presented to the membership for vote at ALI’s 2018 Annual Meeting.

1962

President: Norris Darrell Director: Herbert Wechsler

The Model Penal Code

Although not completed until 1962, the Model Penal Code was the product of a decade of intensive labor by the Institute. Led by Herbert Wechsler, the Model Penal Code project set out to draft a model criminal code that could be adopted by the states. After its publication, 37 states adopted parts of the Code, and several, including New York and New Jersey, adopted nearly all its provisions.

In the video below, Erin E. Murphy, Associate Reporter of the Model Penal Code: Sexual Assault and Related Offenses, and project Adviser Samuel W. Buell discuss the impact and influence of the Model Penal Code.

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Shortly after its publicaton, Herbert L. Packer of Stanford hailed the Code in the pages of the Columbia Law Review as “a superb achievement” that “as a contribution to legal scholarship in our time ... has few if any equals.” The Code’s impact, however, has not been confined to the world of scholarship. The Model Penal Code provided the major impetus for the widespread and long overdue reexamination and codification of the substantive criminal law. As Sanford H. Kadish observed in 1978, “the Model Penal Code has by now permeated and transformed the substantive criminal law of the country.”

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One of the Model Penal Code’s most important contribution to criminal law is its clarification of the different mode of culpability.

The Institute’s 1951 proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation seeking the Foundation’s financial support for the then-unwritten Model Penal Code contained the following statement: “If we are successful, what we do here will affect the thinking about criminal law for the next 50 years, at least, and should be the basis for continued, important, fruitful work.”

To this day, courts continually rely on the Code when a state’s criminal code does not provide guidance.

1965

President: Norris Darrell Director: Herbert Wechsler

Foreign Relations Second Published

In the video below, Foreign Relations Fourth Reporters Paul B. Stephan and William S. Dodge discuss the history of the Restatement Second of Foreign Relations Law and its role in formalizing this area of law.

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The Restatement Second on the Foreign Relations Law of the United States was an incredibly important piece of work by ALI.

“Foreign Relations Law” as a concept refers to the domestic law of any nation that governs how that nation interacts with the rest of the world—this includes with the nations, themselves, as well as their citizens and institutions. Although this concept was apparent before the launch of the project, the Restatement is often credited with formalizing foreign relations law as a legal field.

The Restatement was made possible by a grant from the Ford Foundation awarded in 1955, after a preliminary study financed by the Rockefeller Foundation. The final approval by the membership occurred in 1962, in the heart of the Cold War, when international relationships were most complex, as exemplified by the Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred during that year.

In the Introduction to the Restatement, ALI Director Herbert Wechsler wrote:

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Restatement of the Law Second, Foreign Relations Law of the United States

At a time when the maintenance and development of law in the governance of international relationships increasingly engages the attention and the hopes of all mankind, The American Law Institute takes pride in publishing the Official Draft of the Restatement of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States. …

In developing the form of the Restatement the Reporters have taken full account of the important fact that the foreign relations law of the United States derives from legislative and executive action, including international agreements, as well as from judicial decision and that it attributes importance not only to United States precedents but also to decisions of other national tribunals and to the decisions of international tribunals.

1967

President: Norris Darrell Director: Herbert Wechsler

Trial Manual Published

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In 1967, A Trial Manual for the Defense of Criminal Cases was published by the ALI-ABA Joint Committee on Continuing Legal Education. The product of the combined effort of the ALI-ABA Joint Committee, the American College of Trial Lawyers, and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, the Manual was designed for use in a course of study to be conducted throughout the country and as a working document for lawyers involved in the defense of persons accused of crime.

Originally authored by Anthony G. Amsterdam, Bernard L. Segal, and Martin K. Miller, the Manual is designed to be a how-to-do-it exposition for the general practitioner of the law and practice of criminal defense.

It provides a lawyer in criminal proceedings with a compact guide through the stages of a criminal case, from arrest and investigation to appeal. It identifies critical points in the proceedings, warns of rights to be asserted and interests to be protected at each stage, describes the practices and procedures necessary or useful for the assertion of those rights and the protections of those interests, and, in both narrative and checklist form, suggests steps to be taken or considered by defense counsel at the various stages.

In the video below, Randy Hertz maps out the organization of the Trial Manual and how it is designed to provide public defenders with the information they need as easily as possible.

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1971

President: Norris Darrell Director: Herbert Wechsler

The Boskey Motion

Named for longtime ALI Treasurer Bennett Boskey, this motion is made to approve a draft, or portions of a draft, by ALI’s Council (at a Council Meeting) or membership (at an Annual Meeting). A standard structure of the Boskey motion is: “I move we approve [draft] subject to today’s discussion and the usual editorial prerogatives.”

In other words, the members are asked to approve the draft, subject to any requested changes to which the Reporters agreed or any motions that passed during the course of the Meeting, as well as general, nonsubstantive edits that may be required before publishing.

In the video below, Richard L. Revesz (ALI Director 2014-2023), Diane P. Wood (ALI Director 2023- ), and Conrad Harper reflect on the importance of the Boskey Motion to the progress of ALI projects.

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In a search of ALI’s Annual Meeting Proceedings, Bennett Boskey can be found making an early version of this motion at the 1971 Annual Meeting.

1978

President: R. Ammi Cutter Director: Herbert Wechsler

First Principles Project Launched

ALI’s first Principles project launched on May 16, 1978, after the Council voted to proceed with a project on the Structure and Governance of Corporations, with former SEC Commission Chairman Ray Garrett Jr. serving as the Chief Reporter.

Soon after the project was underway, it became apparent that its title, “Principles of Corporate Governance and Structure: Restatement and Recommendations,” was misleading to many observers of the project. To some of those who studied Tentative Draft No. 1 there appeared to be an inconsistency in applying the term “Restatement” to the project when the product was interlaced with material in the nature of recommendations.

Accordingly, in late 1983, between the publication of Tentative Draft No. 1 and that of Tentative Draft No. 2, it was decided that one peripheral area of controversy could be avoided by changing the title to “Principles of Corporate Governance: Analysis and Recommendations.”

For greater clarification of what a Principles project means and encompasses in current times, read Director Richard L. Revesz’s letter in the Fall 2019 issue of The ALI Reporter.

1978

President: R. Ammi Cutter Director: Herbert Wechsler

Work on Restatement Third Begins

The continued reassessment of the law and the Restatements is at the core of the Institute’s function. In support of this goal, the third series of Restatements began in 1978, starting with the topic of Foreign Relations and later adding the topics of Agency, the Law Governing Lawyers, Property, Restitution and Unjust Enrichment, Suretyship and Guaranty, Torts, Trusts, and Unfair Competition.

In 1977, Foreign Relations Reporter Adrian S. Fisher explained how quickly a new edition could be required. “Although the [Foreign Relations] Restatement was published and distributed only twelve years ago, the pace of change in international law has been so rapid that the Council of the Institute recently called for an exploration of the need for reexamination and revision of the work and for its expansion into other fields.”

1979

President: R. Ammi Cutter Director: Herbert Wechsler

Torts Second and Strict Liability

In 1979, the Institute finished its reexamination of the subject of torts with the completion of Restatement of the Law Second, Torts. Led by Reporter William Lloyd Prosser, this Restatement included § 402A on the topic of strict liability, approved at the 1964 Annual Meeting, which provides that “One who sells any product in a defective condition unreasonably dangerous to the user or consumer or to his property is subject to liability for physical harm” even if the seller has “exercised all possible care.”

In the video below, Kenneth W. Simons, who serves as Reporter on Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Intentional Torts to Persons, discusses § 402A and strict liability.

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Comment b details the history of this topic:

Since the early days of the common law those engaged in the business of selling food intended for human consumption have been held to a high degree of responsibility for their products. As long ago as 1266 there were enacted special criminal statutes imposing penalties upon victualers, vintners, brewers, butchers, cooks, and other persons who supplied “corrupt” food and drink. In the earlier part of this century this ancient attitude was reflected in a series of decisions in which the courts of a number of states sought to find some method of holding the seller of food liable to the ultimate consumer even though there was no showing of negligence on the part of the seller. These decisions represented a departure from, and an exception to, the general rule that a supplier of chattels was not liable to third persons in the absence of negligence or privity of contract. In the beginning, these decisions displayed considerable ingenuity in evolving more or less fictitious theories of liability to fit the case. The various devices included an agency of the intermediate dealer or another to purchase for the consumer, or to sell for the seller; a theoretical assignment of the seller’s warranty to the intermediate dealer; a third party beneficiary contract; and an implied representation that the food was fit for consumption because it was placed on the market, as well as numerous others. In later years the courts have become more or less agreed upon the theory of a “warranty” from the seller to the consumer, either “running with the goods” by analogy to a covenant running with the land, or made directly to the consumer. Other decisions have indicated that the basis is merely one of strict liability in tort, which is not dependent upon either contract or negligence.

Recent decisions, since 1950, have extended this special rule of strict liability beyond the seller of food for human consumption. The first extension was into the closely analogous cases of other products intended for intimate bodily use, where, for example, as in the case of cosmetics, the application to the body of the consumer is external rather than internal. Beginning in 1958 with a Michigan case involving cinder building blocks, a number of recent decisions have discarded any limitation to intimate association with the body, and have extended the rule of strict liability to cover the sale of any product which, if it should prove to be defective, may be expected to cause physical harm to the consumer or his property.

1985

President: Roswell B. Perkins Director: Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Membership Extended to Foreign Lawyers

In May 1985, the Institute’s Council amended its rules to allow entry to membership for foreign lawyers. This profound change allowed the Institute to make progress towards its goal of making a difference in the global law community. The first members to be chosen in the new category were a group of distinguished representatives of the British legal profession, which included Baron Scarman (Leslie George Scarman), former Chairman of the British Law Commission and Lord Justice of Appeal.

In July of 1985, the Institute held a special ceremony in conjunction with the London meeting of the American Bar Association to induct these new foreign members. It was ALI’s first event across the pond.

1986

President: Roswell B. Perkins Director: Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Introduction of Members Consultative Groups

In 1986, the Institute’s newly formed Committee on Member Participation approved an experimental program calling for the creation of a Members Consultative Group (MCG) for some of its new projects. An MCG is made up of ALI members who volunteer to join project discussions at any stage of a project’s life cycle. MCG members are not necessarily experts in the project’s area of law, but provide a vital perspective, as they read the drafts from a generalist’s point of view. MCG participants provide input by attending project meetings and by submitting written comments. The core purpose of the MCG was to more effectively utilize the great resources, knowledge, and expertise of the Institute’s members.

For many years the Institute seemed to function well with the principal involvement of most members consisting of the review of Tentative Drafts and attendance and voting at the Annual Meeting. However, in the 1980s, then ALI President Roswell Perkins sensed frustration among many members because they wanted to play a more useful role in the functioning of the Institute. Similarly, new members often asked how they might become active and contribute to the evolution of the drafts, rather than reviewing a work product that was essentially in final form.

The topic of The Law Governing Lawyers was the first project to have an MCG. At the conclusion of the project, Chief Reporter Charles W. Wolfram of Cornell Law School noted, “Without in the least devaluing the enormous contribution of our Advisers, I would have to say that we often pick up insights and critiques from the Group that we have not received from the Advisers … I would say that the impact of Members through the Group has been truly significant.”

1988

President: Roswell B. Perkins Director: Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

The Henry J. Friendly Medal Established

Established in memory of Henry J. Friendly and endowed by his former law clerks, the Henry J. Friendly Medal recognizes contributions to the law in the tradition of Judge Friendly and the Institute.

The medal is not presented on an annual basis, but rather is reserved for recipients who are considered especially worthy of receiving it.

Judge Pierre N. Leval presents the Friendly Medal to Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III and ALI Director Diane P. Wood

Associate Justice Elena Kagan and Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr.

Associate Justice Elena Kagan presents the Friendly Medal to Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr.

Judge Raymond J. Lohier Jr. presents the Friendly Medal to U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland

Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr. and Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy

Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr. presents the Friendly Medal to Retired U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony M. Kennedy

Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr. and Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr. presents the Friendly Medal to Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Friendly, who died on March 11, 1986, at the age of 82, served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1959 until his death. He was a member of the ALI Council for a quarter of a century and an Adviser for the Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts; the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure; the Federal Securities Code; and the Principles of Corporate Governance.

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The first Friendly Medal was awarded to Edward Weinfeld of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. ALI President Roswell Perkins presented the award on January 16, 1988, in a ceremony at Weinfeld’s home. The presentation took place in the presence of his family and a few of his clerks and close friends, just one day before Weinfeld’s death. Upon presenting the award, Perkins reflected on the lives of Friendly and Weinfeld:

We view this as a celebration of the intellectual and spiritual kinship of two individuals that have so much in common. There is a universal admiration in the legal world for the integrity and quality of the scholarship of these two men; a universal appreciation of their dedication to public service and to the improvement of the processes of government; and a universal recognition of the humanity and quality of friendship and love that is in you, Ed, and that Henry displayed in his lifetime.

Friendly was undoubtedly one of the greatest judges of his time, and his spirit and dedication to the rule of law continue to be embodied by the recipients of this prestigious award. To learn more about Friendly, read the remarks delivered by Pierre N. Leval of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and a former clerk of Friendly, on the presentation of the Friendly Medal to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 2011.

The most recent recipient of the Friendly Medal is Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr. Below is the full list of Friendly Medal recipients:

J. Harvie Wilkinson and Diane P. Wood (2026)
John G. Roberts, Jr. (2023)
Merrick B. Garland (2022)
Anthony M. Kennedy (2019)
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2018)
Conrad K. Harper (2017)
Patricia M. Wald (2016)
Michael Boudin and Pierre N. Leval (2014)
William H. Webster (2013)
Sandra Day O'Connor (2011)
Nicholas de B. Katzenbach (2009)
Ronald M. Dworkin and Richard A. Posner (2005)
Anthony Lewis and Linda Greenhouse (2002)
William T. Coleman Jr. (2000)
Herbert Wechsler (1993)
Paul A. Freund (1989)
Edward Weinfeld (1988)

1990

President: Roswell B. Perkins Director: Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

John Minor Wisdom Award Established

The Wisdom Award was established in honor of Council member John Minor Wisdom, former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The award was endowed in 1990 by Wisdom’s then-present and former law clerks, who did so on the occasion of the celebration of his 85th birthday.

Wisdom served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit during the 1950s and 1960s when the court became known for a series of decisions crucial in advancing the civil rights of African Americans. Until 1981, the Fifth Circuit included Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and the Panama Canal Zone in addition to its current states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

Judge Carolyn Dineen King is presented with the Wisdom Award at the 2026 Annual Meeting by Judge Lee H. Rosenthal.

ALI Director Diane P. Wood presents the Wisdom Award to Kenneth C. Frazier

Thelton Henderson and Yvonne Gonzalez Rodgers

Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers presents the Wisdom Award to Retired Judge Thelton E. Henderson

Wallace B. Jefferson and Margaret Marshall

ALI President Wallace B. Jefferson presents the Wisdom Award to Margaret H. Marshall

Michael Traynor (ALI President 2000-2008) presents the Wisdom Award to Judge Mary M. Schroeder

Writing for the majority in U.S. v. Jefferson County Board of Education in 1966, he wrote:

“The Constitution is both color blind and color conscious. To avoid conflict with the equal protection clause, a classification that denies a benefit, causes harm, or imposes a burden must not be based on race. In that sense, the Constitution is color blind. But the Constitution is color conscious to prevent discrimination being perpetuated and to undo the effects of past discrimination. The criterion is the relevancy of color to a legitimate governmental purpose.”

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The Wisdom Award is not presented annually, but instead is given from time to time in specific recognition of a member of the Institute for outstanding contributions to the work of the Institute. Below is the list of recipients.

Carolyn Dineen King (2026)
Kenneth C. Frazier (2025)
Thelton Henderson (2024)
Margaret H. Marshall and Mary M. Schroeder (2023)
Neil B. Cohen (2014)
Guy Miller Struve (2011)
Jack B. Weinstein (2006)
Michael Marks Cohen (2004)
Donald J. Rapson (1999)
M. Bernard Aidinoff (1995)
W. Loeber Landau (1993)

1991

President: Roswell B. Perkins Director: Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Cutter Reporter's Chair Established

The first Reporter’s Chair was established in the name of then-Chairman of the Council Emeritus R. Ammi Cutter, retired Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and former President of the Institute (1976-1980). The Cutter Chair is occupied by an active ALI Reporter of proven effectiveness for the remaining duration of the project on which the Reporter is engaged.

Cutter was an ALI member for more than 55 years. He joined the Council in 1949 and was elected Second Vice President in 1964, First Vice President in 1968, and then President in 1976. He served as an Adviser to the Model Land Development Code; the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure; the Restatement Second of Property (Landlord and Tenant); the Restatement Second of Property (Donative Transfers); the Restatement Second of the Foreign Relations Law of the United States; and the Restatement Second of Conflict of Laws.

Members of the Harvard Law School Visiting Committee, including R. Ammi Cutter, meeting with students from the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau | Credit: Harvard Law School Library, Historical & Special Collections

The following individuals have held the Chair since it was established:

Nora Freeman Engstrom, Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Miscellaneous Provisions (2022- )
Andrew Kull, Restatement of the Law Third, Restitution and Unjust Enrichment (2006–2011)
William C. Powers Jr. and Michael D. Green, Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm (2001–2006)
Ira Mark Ellman, Katharine T. Bartlett, and Grace Ganz Blumberg, Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution (1998–2001)
James A. Henderson Jr. and Aaron D. Twerski, Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Products Liability (1997–1998)
Neil B. Cohen, Restatement of the Law Third, Suretyship and Guaranty (1994–1997)
Melvin A. Eisenberg, Principles of Corporate Governance (1991–1994)

1992

President: Roswell B. Perkins Director: Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Casner Reporter’s Chair Established

In the history of the ALI, there have been many Reporters, Advisers, and members who have contributed to the success of the Institute. The late A. James Casner is near the top of this list as he was a vital Reporter and Adviser to the Institute for more than half a century. Casner’s work had a profound and revolutionary effect on the law of property, the taxation of trusts and estates, and estate planning.

Following Casner’s death, President Perkins addressed the following words to the Council: “As the Reporter with the longest history of service to the Institute in that capacity, he carved a niche in ALI history that is unlikely ever to be duplicated. He earned a special place in the hearts of all who knew him.”

Casner’s affiliation with the Institute began in 1937 when he became a Special Reporter and member of the Advisory Committee for portions of the original Restatement of Property. He would go on to serve as an Adviser for the Restatement Second of Trusts, as Reporter for the project on Federal Estate and Gift Taxation, and Reporter for the Restatement Second of Property, and over the next 20 years produced in that capacity two volumes on the law of Landlord and Tenant as well as four on Donative Transfers.

During this period he was also the Reporter for the Federal Income Tax Project's study of Subchapter J, a Consultant for the Study on Generation-Skipping Transfers Under the Federal Estate Tax, and Consultant to the Reporter for Restatement Third of Property (Servitudes).

The following individuals have held the Chair since it was established:

Henry E. Smith, Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property (2022-)
Edward C. Halbach Jr., Restatement of the Law Third, Trusts (1993-2012)

In the video below, Casner discusses his development of the first-ever comprehensive course on estate planning as well as ALI’s influence on the development of American jurisprudence.

Remote video URL

1992

President: Roswell B. Perkins Director: Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

The Prudent Investor Rule

In 1992, The American Law Institute published Restatement of the Law Third, Trusts (Prudent Investor Rule), which revised portions of the Restatement Second of Trusts. Since its approval, every state has adopted a version of the modern Prudent Investor Rule, dramatically transforming the law of trusts and other fiduciary investments. Rooted in the teachings of Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), the Rule abolishes all categorical restrictions on investments and imposes a portfolio-as-a-whole standard of care that includes an augmented duty to diversify.

In this video, Robert H. Sitkoff of Harvard Law School details the history and evolution of fiduciary law that led to the Prudent Investor Rule, and the Rule’s continuing influence today.

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The Prudent Investor Rule has been quoted or cited in numerous bank trust-officer manuals and by government agencies, and has therefore played a significant role in shaping law and policy. In addition to references made in The FDIC Trust Examination Manual and in publications by the IRS, the rule is cited in the Comptroller of the Currency’s Investment Management Services – Comptrollers’ Handbook, which states:

The incorporation of MPT into trust law was significantly advanced by the adoption of the Restatement (Third) of Trusts by the American Law Institute in May 1990. ERISA’s statutory and regulatory standards for prudent investing, diversification, and delegation of pension plan fiduciaries are also reflected in the Restatement (Third). Specifically, section 227 of the Restatement (Third) recognizes an expansion of the fiduciary responsibilities of trustees and provides greater latitude in fulfilling such responsibilities.

The American Law Institute’s restatements of trusts have been influential with lawyers, professional trustees, and the courts over the years as summaries of state laws and judicial decisions governing the conduct of trustees. It has greatly influenced the development of trust law in the United States.

The Prudent Investor Rule continues to be highly influential.

1994

President: Charles Alan Wright Director: Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

First Principles Project Completed

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When completed in 1994, the Corporate Governance project was almost as old as the Institute itself. At a meeting of ALI’s founding committee on February 23, 1923, ALI’s founders shared their report that included a section entitled “The Topics Which the Institute May First Undertake to Restate.” One of the first topics suggested was business corporations.

The Committee Reporters observed:

“The major part of the law of business corporations is the result of decisions made in the past fifty years. The importance of the subject is obvious. The present uncertainty of the law pertaining to it is not so much due to conflicts in decisions and statutes as between state and state, or to an overelaboration of rules for the application of fundamental principles, as it is to a confusion and conflict in regard to the legal character of the association and to real differences of opinion as to the correct statement of the fundamental principles applicable to the solution of the more difficult problems presented.”

Throughout the next 70 years, the project would make progress, stall, and be revived multiple times by ALI Directors William Draper Lewis, Herbert Wechsler, and, finally bringing the project to completion, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

2000

President: Michael Traynor Director: Lance Liebman

Going Global: ALI in London

The principal theme of my presidency of The Institute has been the need for strengthening the international aspects of our work.

Charles Alan Wright

ALI President

In keeping with his goal to reach the global law community, ALI President Charles Alan Wright proposed a reception in London, England, in the summer of 2000 (to coincide with the ABA annual meeting). The timing seemed especially appropriate in light of the increased globalization of both the Institute’s membership and work.

This was, however, not the first time ALI held an event in England. In 1985, the Institute held an event to honor Lord Leslie Scarman, former Chairman of the British Law Commission. The event also celebrated the election to ALI of nine members of the UK bar to the newly created category of nonresident members.

Sadly, Wright died just 10 days before the 2000 event, on July 7, at the age of 72. On July 17, the Institute held its reception at the legendary Army & Navy Club. The circumstances of Wright’s death transformed the event into a tribute and remembrance.

Along with new ALI President Michael Traynor and ALI Director Lance Liebman, several other notable ALI members attended the event in order to pay their respects, including U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said, “The great man I once described as a Colossus standing at the summit of our profession was indeed to so many gathered here ‘the quintessential friend.’ We will miss not only his extraordinary scholarship and magnetic advocacy, but above and beyond those qualities, his caring concern for those who joined with him in striving to serve the legal system honorably.”

Today, the Institute continues to uphold Wright’s vision by examining the law on a global scale with recent projects including, among others, Principles for a Data Economy, a joint project with The European Law Institute; the Restatement of the Law, The U.S. Law of International Commercial and Investor–State Arbitration and; its continued work on the Restatement of the Law Fourth, The Foreign Relations Law of the United States.

2006

President: Michael Traynor Director: Lance Liebman

Distinguished Service Award Established

The Distinguished Service Award is given from time to time to a member who over many years has played a major role in the Institute, accepting significant burdens as an officer, Council member, committee chair, or project participant and helping keep the Institute on a steady course.

Judge Raymond J. Lohier Jr. is presented with the Distinguished Service Award at the 2026 Annual Meeting by Judge Gerard E. Lynch.

David F. Levi (ALI President 2017-2026) presents the Distinguished Service Award to Judge Lee H. Rosenthal

Roberta Cooper Ramo (ALI President 2008-2017) presents the Distinguished Service Award to Lance Liebman (ALI Director 1999-2014)

ALI Director Diane P. Wood presents the Distinguished Service Award to Roberta Cooper Ramo (ALI President 2008-2017)

Richard L. Revesz (ALI Director 2014-2023) presents the Distinguished Service Award to Steven O. Weise

It is considered among the highest of honors as an ALI member. These distinguished members are the only ones to receive the honor since its creation in 2006:

Raymond J. Lohier Jr. (2026)
Lee H. Rosenthal (2025)
Lance Liebman (2024)
Roberta Cooper Ramo (2023)
Steven O. Weise (2022)
Carol F. Lee (2019)
Robert H. Mundheim (2015)
Gerhard Casper (2014)
Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr. (2013)
Michael Traynor (2011)
Roswell B. Perkins (2008)
Bennett Boskey (2007)
John T. Subak (2006)

Members may suggest a fellow member for candidacy. They are asked to submit a letter to the Awards Committee’s attention containing a brief biography and describing the candidate’s law-related activities and qualifications to be considered for the award.

2009

President: Roberta Cooper Ramo Director: Lance Liebman

Death Penalty Withdrawn from Model Penal Code

In 2001, ALI launched a project to revisit the Sentencing provisions of the 1962 Model Penal Code. During the course of that project, a motion was presented at the 2007 Annual Meeting that urged the Institute to take a position against the death penalty. At that time, no vote was taken, but Council took the motion under advisement and formed an Ad Hoc Committee on the Death Penalty (committee members included Christine Durham, Kay Knapp, Gerard Lynch, Myles Lynk, Daniel Meltzer (Chair), and William Webster). The ALI Program Committee, chaired by Paul Friedman, reviewed member comments and the report by the Ad Hoc Committee and recommended further study—to be completed by Carol and Jordan Steiker.

The study produced by the Steikers examined whether or not the death penalty was in fact being administered in compliance with the U.S. Constitution. They found that there are too many obstacles, both structural and institutional, to administering the death penalty in a non-arbitrary way, and recommended that ALI avoid any attempt to come up with new rules regarding its proper administration.

From the report: “[T]hese conditions strongly suggest that the Institute recognize that the preconditions for an adequately administered regime of capital punishment do not currently exist and cannot reasonably be expected to be achieved.”

The Council compiled the Steiker Report into a full “Report of the Council to the Membership of The American Law Institute On the Matter of the Death Penalty,” presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting. At that Meeting, a motion was made on behalf of the Council to withdraw Section 210.6 of the Model Penal Code:

“For reasons stated in Part V of the Council’s report to the membership, the Institute withdraws Section 210.6 of the Model Penal Code in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.”

Membership approved this motion at the Annual Meeting. Having been approved by membership, but not yet by the Council, ALI’s Council then had to consider the motion at its next meeting.

On October 23, 2009, the Council voted overwhelmingly, with some abstentions, to accept the above resolution of the capital punishment matter as approved by the Institute’s membership at the 2009 Annual Meeting.

Listen now to Roberta Cooper Ramo (ALI President 2008-2017) and Retired Judge Christine M. Durham discuss ALI’s removal of the death penalty from the Model Penal Code, perhaps one of the earliest indications of the future of capital punishment.

2011

President: Roberta Cooper Ramo Director: Lance Liebman

Early Career Scholars Program Begins

The American Law Institute awards the Early Career Scholars Medal to one or two outstanding early-career law professors whose work is relevant to public policy and has the potential to influence improvements in the law.

The award was created to encourage practical scholarly work and to publicize the work of the honorees by sponsoring conferences on issues related to their work. Honorees are also asked to speak at an Annual Meeting. Formerly known as the Young Scholars Medal, the program is funded by the generous contributions of our members.

2025 Recipients
Madison Condon
Blake Emerson

2023 Recipients
Leah Litman
Crystal S. Yang

2021 Recipients
Ashley S. Deeks
Francis X. Shen

2019 Recipients
Michelle Wilde Anderson
David Pozen

2017 Recipients
Colleen V. Chien
Daniel Schwarcz

2015 Recipients
Elizabeth Chamblee Burch
Michael Simkovic

2013 Recipients
Adam J. Levitin
Amy B. Monahan

2011 Recipients
Oren Bar-Gill
Jeanne C. Fromer

In the video below, Leah M. Litman presents at the 2024 ALI Annual Meeting on the topic of remedial essentialization.

Remote video URL

2012

Work on Restatement Fourth Begins

In 2012, work began on the Fourth series of Restatements with the launch of Restatement of the Law Fourth, The Foreign Relations Law of the United States: Selected Topics in Treaties, Jurisdiction, and Sovereign Immunity, which became the first publication completed in the Restatement Fourth series in 2018.

The launch of the Restatement Fourth series marked the first time the Institute had undertaken a new numbered series of Restatements since work on the Restatement Third began in 1978. Like prior Restatement series, the Restatement Fourth reflects the Institute’s continuing effort to revisit and clarify areas of law shaped by evolving judicial decisions, legislation, and legal practice.

In 2014, the Institute launched Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property. In 2023, work began on a separate volume to complete the Restatement Fourth of Foreign Relations Law.

2012

President: Roberta Cooper Ramo Director: Lance Liebman

ALI Produces Independent Continuing Legal Education Courses

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On April 30, 2012, after much discussion, ALl and the ABA amicably ended their 65-year collaboration in continuing legal education known as ALI-ABA, with each entity moving forward on its own to produce continuing legal education programs. The ALI's effort in providing continuing legal education to lawyers became known as ALI CLE.

In 2025, The American Law Institute began hosting CLE courses with a focus on in-person full- and multi-day conferences, including a live broadcast. The Institute is very proud to continue its service to lawyers throughout the United States.

2014

President: Roberta Cooper Ramo Director: Richard L. Revesz

Updates to the Restatement Numbering Protocol

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Beginning in 2014, the way that Restatements are “numbered” changed. Previously, Restatements were numbered based on their “series.” For example, the Restatement Second series began in 1952, thus any Restatement that launched from that date is a “Restatement of the Law, Second …” This is true even for Restatements that did not have a previous “edition,” i.e., Restatement Second of Foreign Relations Law.

The Council voted to change this structure in October 2014. From that date forward, Restatements are numbered consecutively. Numbering of previously published Restatements will not be changed.

For example, the Restatement of Employment Law (2015), the first in its series, is titled Restatement of the Law, Employment Law; whereas Restatement Fourth of Foreign Relations Law (2018) followed the Restatement Third of Foreign Relations Law (1987).

2015

President: Roberta Cooper Ramo Director: Richard L. Revesz

ALI as Institutional Author in Citations

Through its 19th edition, The Bluebook provided that Restatements of the Law and Model Codes should be cited by their title, followed by their year of publication. The relevant rule indicated that the name of the author should be indicated parenthetically, unless the work was authored by the American Bar Association; The American Law Institute; the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, also known as the Uniform Law Commission (ULC); or a sentencing commission.

In 2015, ALI worked with the leadership of The Bluebook to be acknowledged as the institutional author of our works. ALI publications are now cited as such:

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2018

President: David F. Levi Director: Richard L. Revesz

First Joint Project with European Law Institute

The Principles for a Data Economy project was the first project undertaken jointly by ALI and the European Law Institute (ELI), which, like the ALI, is a membership-based, independent nonprofit organization with the mission of providing guidance on legal developments.

ALI Director Richard L. Revesz, Reporters Neil B. Cohen of Brooklyn Law School and Christiane C. Wendehorst of University of Vienna, with Project Chairs Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd of Essex Court Chambers and Steven O. Weise of Proskauer Rose

As the proposal for the project indicates, “the law governing trades in commerce has historically focused on assets, and on trade in items, that are either real property, or goods, or rights (including shares, contract rights, intellectual property rights, licenses, etc.). With the emergence of the data economy, however, tradeable items often cannot readily be classified as goods or rights, and they are arguably not services. They are often simply ‘data’, which may be considered as any piece of information recorded in any form or medium.”

There is uncertainty, both in the United States and in Europe, concerning the legal rules that should apply to the data economy. When our walking and running steps are recorded by our smart phone or our driving patterns are recorded by our cars, data is being generated and then aggregated across large numbers of individuals. Who owns this valuable information? Who can trade in it? What rights do the various actors have?

This project will “study, identify, and collate the existing and potential legal rules applicable to transactions in data as an asset and as a tradeable item and assess the ‘fit’ of those rules with these transactions.” It will not address, however, the regulation of data privacy or intellectual property rights relating to data. The end-product will be a set of transnational principles that could be used by participants in the data economy. And, these principles might also provide guidance to courts and legislatures worldwide.

In 2024, ALI and ELI began work on their second joint project, Principles for the Governance of Biometric Data. This project will investigate the underlying technologies and socio-technical systems through which biometric data is collected and processed, as well as the legal, political, technological, and economic context in which these technologies are being developed and used.

2019

President: David F. Levi Director: Richard L. Revesz

Three Projects Begin to Complete Restatement Third of Torts

In 2019, ALI launched three projects, which will complete the ongoing Restatement Third of Torts. The three projects are Defamation and Privacy, Remedies, and Concluding Provisions.

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 and Liability for Economic Harm. Two additional torts categories are being covered in current projects: Intentional Torts to Persons and Property Torts.

Restatement of the Law, Torts was one of the first projects launched in 1923, when ALI was founded. To date, the Torts publications are ALI’s most cited works in court opinions, including the Supreme Court of the United States.

2019

President: David F. Levi Director: Richard L. Revesz

Launch of Corporate Governance Restatement

The Institute first tackled the subject of corporate governance more than 25 years ago in Principles of 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 current state of the law and reflect it in the Restatement.

2019

President: David F. Levi Director: Richard L. Revesz

ALI Documentary

Remote video URL

The American Law Institute was selected to be profiled by Visionaries in its 23rd season. Visionaries is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to producing and distributing media that inspires individuals and communities to take action for positive social change. Since 1995, Visionaries has been producing a documentary series for public television. Hosted by Sam Waterston of the TV show Law & Order, the documentary series highlights the stories of nonprofit organizations around the world that are working to make a positive difference in their communities and beyond.

ALI is grateful to the numerous members and project participants who sat down for interviews with the Visionaries crew, many of which appear in the video above.

2020

President: David F. Levi Director: Richard L. Revesz

Annual Meeting Cancelled for Second Time

In response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Institute’s Executive Committee decided to cancel the 2020 Annual Meeting, originally scheduled for May 18-20 in San Francisco, California.

This is only the second time in the Institute’s long history that the Annual Meeting has been cancelled.

Read the message from ALI President David F. Levi on the cancellation of the Meeting.

2021

President: David F. Levi Director: Richard L. Revesz

ALI Holds First Virtual Annual Meeting

In response to group gathering and travel restrictions imposed as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, ALI held its 2021 Annual Meeting on a virtual platform—a first for the Institute. Members, project participants, and guests gathered virtually on May 17-18 and June 7-8.

The 2021 virtual Annual Meeting opening session included a business report update from ALI Leadership (clockwise from left to right): Nominating Committee Chair Jeffrey S. Sutton, President David F. Levi, Treasurer Wallace B. Jefferson, 2nd Vice President Teresa Wilton Harmon, and Director Richard L. Revesz.

The agenda included sessions on eleven projects, including four projects that were presented for the first time to membership: Restatement of the Law, Copyright; Restatement of the Law Third, Conflicts of Law; Principles for a Data Economy; and Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property. Of the eleven projects presented to membership, four of the project drafts approved by membership marked the completion of the project, subject to the discussion at the Meeting and the usual editorial prerogative:

Restatement of the Law, The Law of American Indians

Principles of the Law, Compliance and Enforcement for Organizations

Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Intentional Torts to Persons

Principles for a Data Economy

Additionally, membership voted to approve Tentative Draft No. 5 of Model Penal Code: Sexual Assault and Related Offenses. Approval of this draft marks the completion of the project, subject to the Council’s approval of the amendments approved at the Annual Meeting.

2022

President: David F. Levi Director: Richard L. Revesz

Reforming the Electoral Count Act

The events of January 2021 generated calls for reform and the development and discussion of various approaches to urgently needed revision of the Electoral Count Act (ECA). Enacted 135 years ago in the years following the disputed 1876 presidential election, the ECA governs Congress’s constitutional role in counting each state’s electoral votes for President and Vice President. The statute has been widely criticized as poorly written, open to conflicting interpretations, and on uncertain constitutional footing.

At the invitation of the leadership of ALI, a group whose members span a range of legal and political views came together to consider possible ECA reforms. Despite holding diverse legal, political, and ideological commitments, the group was united by the belief that Congress should reform the ECA before the 2024 presidential election.

Led by co-chairs Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith, the group agreed on several general principles that should guide ECA reform, as well as specific proposals as to what ECA reform should seek to accomplish. Read the group's set of principles here.

The principles were released in April 2022. Because of the need for quick action, this project did not go through the typical ALI bicameral process, which requires approval by both its Council and membership, and therefore is not considered the official work of the Institute.

In July 2022, two proposals were introduced by a bipartisan U.S. Senate group which include legislation to reform and modernize the outdated Electoral Count Act of 1887 to ensure that the electoral votes tallied by Congress accurately reflect each state’s vote for President.

In developing the bills, the senators received input from state election officials, as well as from an ideologically diverse group of election experts and legal scholars, including ALI. On July 21, 2022, Senator Benjamin Cardin of Maryland presented the Senate group’s proposal, highlighting ALI’s work in drafting ECA reform:

“I want to thank the work of The American Law Institute, which convened a bipartisan working group to consider possible ECA reforms. In particular, I want to thank cochairs Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith for their contributions to our efforts. I also want to thank the staff at Protect Democracy for their suggestions and work here.”

2023

President: David F. Levi Director: Diane P. Wood

Happy 100th Anniversary, ALI

February 23, 2023, marked ALI’s 100th Anniversary. The work accomplished in the last century would not have been possible without the dedication of our members. Thank you to all who have contributed to our work and mission to clarify, modernize, and improve the law.

In May 2023, members gathered at the Annual Meeting to celebrate ALI's Centennial. Since its founding in 1923, the Institute has brought together judges, lawyers, and academics to clarify, modernize, and improve the law. Over the course of a century, ALI has produced Restatements, Principles, Model Codes, and other projects that have influenced courts, legislatures, legal education, and legal practice throughout the United States and beyond.

The centennial celebration honored the generations of members whose contributions made this work possible while reaffirming the Institute’s commitment to its mission for the century ahead.

A centerpiece of the Annual Meeting was a large-scale interactive exhibition highlighting major milestones in ALI’s history. The exhibit traced the Institute’s evolution from its founding in 1923 through landmark achievements such as the publication of the first Restatements, the development of the Uniform Commercial Code and Model Penal Code, the launch of Principles projects, and the continuing work of successive Restatement series. Members and guests were invited to explore a century of legal scholarship, law reform, and public service that has shaped the Institute’s first 100 years.

2024

President: David F. Levi Director: Diane P. Wood

Ethical Standards for Election Administration

In January 2024, the leadership of The American Law Institute convened a group from across the political spectrum to assemble a proposed set of universal Ethical Standards for Election Administration. Explaining the goal behind the project and its timing, the Report states: “Even if the times were not so challenging, it would be appropriate to encourage those who conduct elections to consider the principles that undergird their work, inform the public of those principles, and hold each other accountable to them.”

Led by Charles Stewart III, Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science at MIT and founder of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab; Bob Bauer, Professor of Practice and Distinguished Scholar in Residence and Co-Director of the Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic at NYU; and Ben Ginsberg, the Volker Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institute, the full working group can be found listed in the Report.

In 2026, the Election Assistance Commission’s (EAC) Audit Standards highlighted the ALI’s Ethical Standards for Election Administration Report in their voluntary national standards for election audits.

The standards were developed through collaboration between the EAC and members of its advisory boards and are intended to provide a voluntary framework to support election officials across the country as they design and conduct audits. The document emphasizes that election audits are essential tools for verifying compliance with election laws, strengthening checks and balances, and reinforcing public trust in election administration.

The EAC’s standards featured the seven core principles identified in the original work of the ALI’s bipartisan working group:

Adhere to the law. Election officials have a duty to administer the law as written and interpreted by the relevant authorities.
Protect and defend the integrity of the election process. Election officials have a duty to safeguard against unfounded attacks on the integrity of the election process.
Promote transparency in the conduct of elections. Election officials have a duty to make election administration transparent to the public.
Treat all participants in the election process impartially. Election officials have an obligation to treat all participants in the electoral process impartially, including voters, candidates, citizens, and political committees.
Demonstrate personal integrity. Election officials have a duty to conduct themselves honestly and forthrightly in all interactions with superiors, peers, candidates, campaign officials, and the general public.
Practice the highest level of ethics and stewardship. Election officials have a duty to expend public funds carefully and foster respect among employees and volunteers.
Advance professional excellence. Election officials have a duty to stay informed about election laws and new developments in election management.

1923

George W. Wickersham

President 1923-1936

George Woodward Wickersham was unanimously elected President of ALI at the first Council meeting on February 24, 1923, and served as President until his death in 1936. From the beginning, he held a firm belief in the social usefulness of the Institute’s work.

In the first 13 years of the Institute’s organization, there were 13 Annual Meetings, 48 Council meetings, and 69 Executive Committee meetings. Wickersham was present at and presided over all of these meetings except those held in the spring of 1925, when he was in Europe serving as the sole representative of the United States on a committee of the Council of the League of Nations for the simplification and improvement of International Law, and in 1934 when he was confined to his house by illness for several months.

An active member of government for most of his life, Wickersham served as U.S. attorney general from 1909 to 1913, under the administration of President William Howard Taft. As attorney general, Wickersham prioritized the enforcement of the Sherman Antitrust Law against illegal corporate practices.

In 1929, President Herbert Hoover appointed Wickersham to the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, better known as the "Wickersham Commission." The commission was tasked with investigating Prohibition and crime, and making public policy recommendations. Its report, released in 1931, addressed police interrogation tactics, corruption in police ranks, and the kinds of problems communities faced when enforcing laws related to Prohibition.

Wickersham returned to government under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he was appointed as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, serving from 1933 to 1936 during the administration.

Did you know?

The Wickersham Commission was the first national study of crime and law enforcement in the United States.

William Draper Lewis

Director 1923-1947

“The relation between American judges, practitioners and teachers of law is closer and much more salutary than it was when he began his work. There was a quality in this man which stimulated friendship and aroused affection. I cannot at the moment think of any institution other than the Institute which was to so large an extent the expression of the personality of one man.” — George Wharton Pepper on the legacy of William Draper Lewis

If any one man can be credited with the creation of The American Law Institute, William Draper Lewis is unquestionably that man. It was he who first commended to Elihu Root a practicable plan for dealing with the indigestible mass of reported cases. And, when Root's endorsement had secured the necessary financial support, it was Lewis who, as ALI’s first Director, formulated and put into operation the plans which converted a dream into reality.

Lewis was the first full-time dean of the University of Pennsylvania, where he served in that role until 1914 and continued as member of the faculty until 1924.

For more than twenty years, Lewis familiarized himself with every phase of the Institute's work and no detail was small enough to escape his attention. In 1947, Lewis reluctantly resigned as Director of the Institute due to his failing health.

I have enjoyed my work as Director. Friends, in their kindness, tell me that the Institute owes much to me. Being human, such praise raises in me a knowledge of what the cat feels when he purrs. But I know that nothing I may have given to this Institute is a full return for that which the Institute has given me.

William Draper Lewis

Long before the founding of the Institute, Lewis had developed a strong friendship and productive working relationship with George Wharton Pepper, who would later go on to become second president of ALI. In addition to serving as editors of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review (then known as the American Law Register and Review), in the late 1800s Lewis and Pepper worked together as editors of A digest of the laws of Pennsylvania from 1700 to 1894.

After his death in 1949, a piece honoring Lewis was featured in the University of Pennsylvania law Review, written by Pepper. Pepper’s work honoring his longtime friend is available here, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. George W. Pepper, William Draper Lewis, 98 U. PA. L. REV. 4 (1949).

William Draper Lewis and George Wharton Pepper | Credit: University of Pennsylvania Archives

1936

George Wharton Pepper

President 1936-1947

A charter member of the Institute from its beginning, George Wharton Pepper became a Council member in 1930 and Vice President in 1932, succeeding Benjamin Cardozo when he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court. He then served as ALI’s second President from 1936 to 1947.

At his graduation ceremony from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1889, Pepper delivered his law school's commencement address on the topic, “The Rights of Married Women.”

Over the next twenty years, Pepper developed an increasingly successful private law practice while also teaching at Penn Law. He was the first member of the Penn Law faculty to introduce the case system of instruction, which had been followed at Harvard for two decades but was adopted very slowly and reluctantly in others schools.

On January 9, 1922, Pepper was sworn in as Pennsylvania's junior senator, having earlier declined to serve as a federal appellate judge and as mayor of Philadelphia. He served on the Senate until 1927. In the final year of his term, he was appointed by the U.S. Supreme Court to represent the plaintiffs in Myers v. United States. The case, which concerned the right of the president to remove an executive official without the approval of Congress, further propelled Pepper into the national limelight.

After serving in public office, Pepper returned to his law practice in Philadelphia. He never again sought public office but continued to be a vocal figure on political issues of the day. In 1936, Pepper, who was an open critic of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, was one of the leading lawyers in United States v. Butler, the Supreme Court case that declared the Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional.

A lifelong devotee to the rule of law, Pepper remained in private practice and continued to serve professional organizations until his death in 1961.

Did You Know?

Upon graduating from Penn Law, Pepper received the Sharswood Essay Prize for his essay, “The Borderland of Federal and State Decisions.” Nearly fifty years later, his essay would be cited by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins.

1947

Harrison Tweed

President 1947-1961

Harrison Tweed served as ALI’s third President from 1947 to 1961. He was elected in 1925 to life membership, only two years after ALI’s founding. Articulate, educated, and known for possessing a great deal of wit and humor, Tweed was an elemental force in the growth, development, and lasting legacy of the Institute.

Tweed graduated from St. Mark's School in Southborough, Massachusetts, and received a B.A. from Harvard College in 1907. His law career began with a clerkship in the office of Byrne and Cutcheon in New York City. He later joined one of the predecessor firms to Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, where he remained a partner for the rest of his life. Tweed was born partially deaf and as a result never tried a case over the entirety of his legal career.

In late 1947, when illness compelled George Wharton Pepper to resign as ALI President, Tweed, who had been a Council member since 1942, was elected President and re-elected each year until 1961, when he chose to retire. He was an Adviser to the first Restatement of Trusts from 1930 to 1935. Beginning in the 1930s he was also trustee of the Practicing Law Institute and chaired the ALI-ABA Joint Committee on Continuing Legal Education.

He was a guiding force in the Institute’s major labors—instrumental in securing large grants from foundations, the updating of the Institute’s published Restatements, as well as the preparation of the Uniform Commercial Code, model codes, and statutes on penal law and taxation.

Tweed believed profoundly in the need for “refreshment” of the law and advocated this work by writing articles, speaking to lawyers groups, and organizing conferences. He highly valued education and public service, even considering a career as a teacher before deciding to enter law school.

Even if he contributes nothing more than a sense of orderliness and an ability to organize thought and to pose the right questions, the lawyer will have pulled his weight in the boat.

Harrison Tweed

Herbert F. Goodrich

Director 1947-1962

“To the extent which our work succeeds, we are making a contribution to justice according to law, about as fundamental a human value as we know. We must not lose it, even when the pressure of immediate demands makes it take, temporarily, a less conspicuous place.” — Herbert F. Goodrich

Herbert “Funk” Goodrich was the second Director of The American Law Institute from 1947 until his death in 1962.

Born in rural Minnesota in 1889, Herbert F. Goodrich made his way to Harvard Law and by the age of thirty he had become professor at the University of Iowa College of Law, then acting dean two years later. He then served for seven years as professor of law at the University of Michigan, before arriving in Philadelphia in 1929 as dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where he remained for 11 years. During this time he became a leading citizen of the state. Offered the Attorney-Generalship, he declined, but on June 30, 1940 he resigned from Penn Law to accept an appointment on the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

His work with ALI began at an Institute Conference held in Chicago in 1927. Goodrich, then living in Michigan, suggested that the several state bar associations produce annotations of each Restatement giving the pertinent decisions and statutes of their state. The suggestion was enthusiastically received and a number of state bar associations began the work.

As the project progressed, it became to work more directly with the individual state bar associations, to be sure that material was efficiently organized. Goodrich was appointed Adviser on Professional and Public Relations (later shortened to Director of Professional Relations) to fill this need. He served as the representative of the Institute in encouraging the organization of state bar committees and securing the manuscripts of the state annotations. By 1945, due in great part to Goodrich’s efforts, 126 separate annotations on different subjects had been published.

Goodrich became the second director of the Institute in 1947, succeeding William Draper Lewis. Much like his predecessor, he cooperated fully with every group of Advisers not only on Restatements but on all Institute projects. Particularly, he served as Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Uniform Commercial Code from the inception of that project until its completion; and when a Permanent Editorial Board for the Uniform Commercial Code was created by joint action of the Commissioners and the Institute, Goodrich became Chairman of that Board.

Goodrich with his wife Mary and their dalmatian, Daisy (photo courtesy of the Kalkstein Family)

Did You Know?

Goodrich served as both ALI Director and Third Circuit Judge until his death in 1962.

1961

Norris Darrell

President 1961-1976

Norris Darrell was elected to the Institute in 1947 and became its fourth President 14 years later. He graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School. Following graduation, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Pierce Butler and joined the New York law firm Sullivan and Cromwell in 1925, with which he remained affiliated for more than sixty years.

Over the course of his career, he became involved in handling a substantial number of tax cases in the U.S. Tax Court, the Court of Claims, the Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the U.S. Supreme Court. His abiding sense of public responsibility found fulfillment during these years in service on tax advisory committees. During the 1940s, he helped Beardsley Ruml develop the “pay-as-you-go” income tax plan. This passion for tax reform continued during his time working with the Institute.

Prior to his election to the Institute, in 1946, Darrell submitted a proposal to ALI’s Director, William Draper Lewis, urging that ALI undertake its first tax project, an ambitious effort to update and improve the Internal Revenue Code. The proposal was accepted and the resulting Federal Tax Project had a significant impact on the development of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 and on subsequent legislation.

No account of Darrell’s contribution to ALI would be complete without mention of the part he played in enlisting Herbert Wechsler as ALI’s Director. When Director Goodrich passed away in the spring of 1962, the task of guiding the search for his successor became one of Darrell’s early responsibilities.

Did You Know?

ALI commissioned a medal in Darrell’s honor. The first impression of this bronze medal was presented by R. Ammi Cutter at the 1973 Annual Meeting.

1962

Herbert Wechsler

Director 1962-1984

Herbert Wechsler served from 1963 to 1984 as the Institute’s third Director. Co-author of seminal casebooks that reshaped thinking about the federal courts and criminal law and author of the celebrated Holmes lecture at Harvard, “Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law,” Wechsler also served as Chief Reporter for the Institute’s Model Penal Code during the decade that brought that highly influential project to its conclusion. Wechsler’s wife, Doris Wechsler, herself a lawyer and member of the Institute, often noted that he considered the Model Code his proudest achievement.

During his 21-year tenure as Director of the Institute, ALI completed the Second Restatements of Conflict of Laws, Contracts, Judgments, and Torts, as well as the original Restatement of Foreign Relations Law of the United States, major portions of the Second Restatement of Property, various studies in federal taxation, the Federal Securities Code, the Model Code of Pre-Arraignment Procedure, the Model Land Development Code, the Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts, and major revisions of the Uniform Commercial Code.

Wechsler retired as Director and became Director Emeritus in 1984, but he continued to be active in the Institute's affairs as a member of the Council. In 1993, he became the third recipient of the Institute’s Henry J. Friendly Medal for his “outstanding achievement in promoting reform and clarification of the law” and for the extent to which his “outstanding intelligence, integrity, and devotion to the law ... enriched the subjects of Constitutional Law, Criminal Law, and Federal Jurisdiction, as well as legal thinking generally.”

A 1931 graduate of Columbia Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review, Wechsler taught for a year at Columbia before going to Washington to serve as a law clerk to Justice Harlan Fiske Stone of the United States Supreme Court. He rejoined the Columbia faculty in 1933 and remained affiliated with Columbia for the rest of his life, taking emeritus status in 1978.

From 1944 to 1946, he was Assistant Attorney General in charge of the War Division, and his responsibilities included development of the legal framework for trying Nazi war criminals and service as chief technical adviser to the American judges at the Nuremberg Trials. In the 1960s he argued the seminal case of New York Times v. Sullivan in the Supreme Court on behalf of the Times. The case established the principle that, under the First Amendment, damages for defamation of a public figure can only be awarded upon a showing that the defamatory statement had been made with “actual malice.”

Listen now to an excerpt of Wechsler’s 1964 oral argument in New York Times before the U.S. Supreme Court. The American Law Institute would like to thank Oyez for the excerpted portion of this Supreme Court oral argument. This material is released under the Creative Commons license. Oyez is a free law project from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, Justia, and Chicago-Kent College of Law. Listeners may learn more about Oyez or listen to full oral arguments online at oyez.org.

Read the Memorial Minute in memory of Wechsler, read by Roswell Perkins.

1976

R. Ammi Cutter

President 1976-1980

Richard Ammi Cutter served as ALI’s 5th President from 1976 to 1980. In addition to his role as president, he was an active ALI member for more than fifty years, holding numerous offices, and also served on numerous committees. Elected to the Institute in 1938 at the age of 36, he became a member of the Council of the Institute in 1949. Throughout his active and lengthy membership, Cutter served as an Adviser on many projects of the Institute, including the Restatement Second of Property; the Restatement Second of Conflict of Laws; and the Model Land Development Code.

These many years of devoted service prompted the Institute to name its First Reporter’s Chair for Ammi Cutter.

Upon his graduation from Harvard College in 1922, Cutter went on to Harvard Law School where he earned his law degree as a member of the class of 1925, serving in his final year as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He entered private practice, briefly for Goodwin Procter and then at Edwards Wildman.

He spent three years in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office and took an extended military leave during World War II. During that time, Cutter served in the legal branch at the Pentagon and as an aide to the assistant secretary of war. He played a role in shaping the military governance of Germany and Japan immediately after the war and conducted research leading up to the prosecution of war crimes before international tribunals.

He returned to private practice before being appointed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 1956. He retired from that court in 1972. However, in 1980, he began a decade-long tenure as a recall justice of the Massachusetts Appeals Court, serving ably into his eighties before retiring in 1990.

Did You Know?

In 1963, Cutter, then a Council member, drafted a paper in which he described the problem of membership engagement:

“For some time members of the Council have felt that the Institute was not making adequate use of the learning and experience of all Institute members in carrying out our projects.”

His suggestion for a solution was, among others, to involve members by soliciting written comments on draft before the Annual Meeting. His recommendation was essentially adopted and is in force today.

1980

Roswell B. Perkins

President 1980-1993

As ALI’s sixth president, Roswell B. Perkins was a guiding force and a tremendous influence on the legacy of the Institute. During his presidency he played a leading role in the development of the Principles of Corporate Governance: Analysis and Recommendations. An ALI member since 1964, he served on numerous projects and committees. In recognition of his years of service, ALI presented him with the Distinguished Service Award in 2008.

Perkins, a native of Boston, received his undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He retired from partnership in Debevoise & Plimpton in 2001, 52 years after joining the firm as an associate in 1949.

Following travel to Russia in 1985, Perkins spearheaded the inauguration of a Russian practice for the firm. Upon the decision of the firm to open an office in Moscow, Perkins relocated to Moscow in December 1997 to head up the new office, as Resident Partner of Debevoise in Moscow. He served in that capacity for three-and-a-half years, representing companies based in Russia, the U.S., UK, Europe, Scandinavia and the Far East. Among the projects included in the Russian practice of the firm in those years were project financings for three Russian oil refineries under U.S. Ex-Im Bank loan guarantee programs, two large investment funds targeted at Russia, joint ventures and extensive investment and general corporate activity.

Perkins’ ALI Presidency ended in 1993. The Institute’s Annual Report featured a tribute to Perkins by Erwin N. Griswold.

Did You Know?

In addition to his work at Debevoise, Perkins also served in the government, chiefly as Assistant Secretary of the newly created Department of Health, Education, and Welfare during the Eisenhower administration, and as Counsel to New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller.

Perkins (left) with Oveta Culp Hobby, First U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1954) | Photo Credit: Abbie Rowe, Courtesy National Park Service

1984

Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Director 1984-1999

An ALI member for 52 years, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr. served for nine years as the Reporter for the Restatement Second of Judgments, published in 1982. The experience may have prompted his wry remark at the 1999 Annual Dinner that “qualifications for Reporter in an ALI project include good health and proven stamina.” He succeeded Herbert Wechsler as ALI’s fourth Director in 1984, skillfully guiding the ALI’s already-begun Principles of Corporate Governance and Restatement Third of Foreign Relations Law to completion. Many new ALI projects were begun under his leadership, including Restatement Third works on Agency, The Law Governing Lawyers, Property, Restitution, Suretyship, Torts, Trusts, and Unfair Competition; and Principles of the Law projects on Family Dissolution, Transnational Civil Procedure, and Transnational Insolvency. It was also during his tenure as Director that the Institute first turned its attention to projects with an international scope, a trend that continues today.

On stepping down as Director after 15 years, Hazard was elected to ALI’s Council in 1999, serving until he took emeritus status in August 2015. He also was Co-Reporter for the ALI/UNIDROIT Principles of Transnational Civil Procedure (2006), which has become a path-breaking model of civil procedure for international commercial disputes.

When Hazard received the ALI’s Distinguished Service Award at the 2013 Annual Meeting, his former student and research assistant at Yale, Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., spoke in Hazard’s honor, sharing memories of his student days. On presenting the award, Anthony J. Scirica of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit succinctly captured the astounding breadth of Hazard’s career:

Law professor at several great law schools, prolific scholar, author of textbooks, legendary teacher, mentor, rulemaker of procedural rules and rules of attorney conduct, and, of course, the former Director of The American Law Institute, Geoff continues to leave an indelible imprint on the American and international legal systems. He is truly one of the law’s wise men.

Born in Cleveland, Hazard was a graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia Law School. He began his career in private practice in Oregon, serving also as deputy legislative counsel for the State of Oregon and executive secretary of the Oregon Interim Committee on Judicial Administration. One of the nation’s foremost authorities on professional ethics, trial practice, and civil procedure, Hazard’s teaching career spanned almost six decades, beginning at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, in 1958, then at the University of Chicago Law School, Yale Law School, the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

He was Reporter for the American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct (promulgated in 1983) and draftsman-consultant for the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct (promulgated in 1972). He served since 1994 as a member and a consultant on the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, Judicial Conference of the United States. He also advised the European Law Institute on its proposal to develop European rules of civil procedure from the ALI/UNIDROIT Principles of Transnational Civil Procedure.

Read more about Hazard's extraordinary career in The New York Times and the ABA Journal. The Spring 2019 Issue of Hastings Law Journal (Issue 4, Volume 70) is dedicated to Hazard.

Watch Hazard’s remarks upon receiving ALI’s Distinguished Service Award at the 2013 Annual Meeting in the below video.

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Did You Know?

In 2018, Mary Kay Kane of UC Hastings College of Law, who worked with Hazard in many capacities, established a special fund to recognize Hazard’s exemplary ALI directorship and ensure that his memory remains connected to the ongoing work of the Institute.

1993

Charles Alan Wright

President 1993-2000

Charles Alan Wright was a prominent professor, lawyer, and legal scholar who served as the seventh President of ALI from 1993 to 2000.

Wright was born on September 3, 1927, in Philadelphia. He graduated from high school at the age of 16 and went on to complete his undergraduate degree at Wesleyan University at the age of 18, before graduating from Yale Law School.

After law school, he clerked for Judge Charles E. Clark of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In 1950 he began to teach law at the University of Minnesota. Five years later, he moved to Austin and joined the faculty of the University of Texas Law School.

A member of the Council since 1969, he was elected Second Vice President of the Institute in 1987, and First Vice President in 1988 and then was elected President of the Institute in 1993. Wright was the first law professor to hold the position in the history of the Institute. Among his many contributions, and over the course of his many dedicated years of service, Wright was a Reporter for the Institute's Study of the Division of Jurisdiction Between State and Federal Courts from 1963 until its completion in 1969 and also served as an Adviser to Restatement Second, Judgments; Restatement Second, Restitution; and Restatement Third, Unfair Competition.

He was an author and coauthor of major treatises on the federal courts and on federal practice and procedure, the time of his death he held the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Courts at Texas, which had been specially created in his honor.

Wright died on July 7, 2000 at North Austin Medical Center from complications after surgery. He was 72. M. Michael Sharlot, dean of the UT Austin law school, once called Wright “the paradigm of the American lawyer-scholar.”

In the video below, Douglas Laycock (Texas Law) remembers Charles Alan Wright during their time together at The University of Texas School of Law and he reflects on Wright’s influence on his work in the field of Remedies.

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Did You Know?

A devotee of detective fiction, Wright frequently reviewed crime novels that dealt with lawyers and the law in the ALI-ABA periodical, The Practical Lawyer.

1999

Lance Liebman

Director 1999-2014

Lance Liebman served as ALI’s Director from 1999 to 2014. During his directorship, he oversaw a significant expansion of the Institute's work, as well as the development of ALI’s international partnerships, including with the European Law Institute. His commitment to ALI’s contribution to the international community continues today.

Restatement projects begun during his tenure include American Indian Law, Charitable Nonprofit Organizations, Consumer Contracts, Employment Law, Data Privacy, International Commercial and Investor-State Arbitration, three Torts projects (Economic Harm; Intentional Torts; and Physical and Emotional Harm), and Concise Restatement volumes on Law Governing Lawyers, Property (compiled by Liebman himself), and Torts.

Liebman retired in 2019 from Columbia Law School where he was the William S. Beinecke Professor of Law Emeritus and former Dean. Before joining Columbia in 1991 as Dean, Liebman was on the faculty of Harvard Law School for 21 years, becoming a full professor in 1976 and serving as Associate Dean from 1981 to 1984.

Chapin, C. (1979). Lance M. Liebman. | Credit: Harvard Law School Library, Historical & Special Collections

After serving as a law clerk to Justice Byron White of the U.S. Supreme Court, he spent two years working on transportation and community issues as an Assistant to Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York City.

He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, and also holds a master’s degree from Cambridge University.

Liebman has been a Visiting Fulbright Professor of Law at Maharajah Sayajirao University in Baroda, India, a visiting lecturer at Tokyo University, and an adviser for the Japanese Institute of Labor. He also taught at the Harvard-Fulbright School in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

The below video pays tribute to Liebman’s work as director, with remarks from ALI Council members.

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Did You Know?

During Liebman’s tenure as Director, ALI completed 19 projects.

2000

Michael Traynor

President 2000-2008

Michael Traynor served as ALI’s eighth President from 2000 to 2008, taking office after the sudden death of Charles Alan Wright. He is a recipient of ALI’s Distinguished Service Award.

Traynor has been an ALI member since 1972 and was elected to the Council in 1985. He has served as an Adviser for several ALI projects, including Restatement Third of Unfair Competition, both the Projects Liability and Apportionment of Liability segments of Restatement Third of Torts, the 1988 Revisions to the Restatement Second of Conflict of Laws, Restatement Third of Restitution, Restatement Third of Conflict of Laws, and Restatement Fourth of the Foreign Relations Law (Jurisdiction).

Traynor received his B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley and his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He studied economics at Berkeley as an undergraduate and then law at Harvard. He served as a deputy attorney general in California before joining the law firm now known as Cooley Godward Kronish. At Cooley he engaged in a national litigation practice that has included major assignments concerning intellectual property, the First Amendment, and internal corporate investigations.

Varied cases at the trial and appellate level have involved him in appearances before state and federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, and also before administrative agencies, arbitrators and mediators. In 2004, Traynor received the John P. Frank Outstanding Lawyer Award from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The award recognizes a lawyer who has “demonstrated outstanding character and integrity; dedication to the rule of law; proficiency as a trial and appellate lawyer; success in promoting collegiality among members of the bench and bar; and a lifetime of service to the federal courts of the Ninth Circuit.”

He is currently senior counsel at Cobalt LLP in Berkley California and a member of the Board of Directors of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Developmental Studies Center, and the Berkeley Community Fund. He also is a life fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member and past president (1973) of the Bar Association of San Francisco, and a past chairman and president of the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund (now Earthjustice).

At Traynor’s last Annual Meeting as President, Senator Paul Sarbanes shared some thoughts about his friend:

“Mike Traynor is one of the most decent, fair, and honest people I have ever known. He has an innate sense of justice a deep and passionate concern to help build a just society, and a rock-ribbed integrity in a time when so many people appear to have lost their moral compasses. His impact on the legal profession and our society has been profound. Our friendship, which began in law school in 1957 and continued for over half a century, has meant so much to me.”

Listen to Traynor on the Serve to Lead podcast, a project of the Serve to Lead Foundation. In the episode, “The State of the Lawyer-Statesman Ideal,” he shares his thoughts on current and past representations of the “lawyer-statesman ideal” while commenting on the challenges today’s legal professionals face in upholding this ideal.

Did You Know?

Traynor’s father, the late Chief Justice of California Roger J. Traynor, served on the ALI Council from 1963 to 1980 and continued as an emeritus Council member until his death in 1983.

2008

Roberta Cooper Ramo

President 2008-2017

Roberta Cooper Ramo has been an active member of ALI for more than 25 years. Elected to the Council in 1997, she served as First Vice President before being elected the first woman President of the Institute in 2008.

During her nine years as President, she brought a focus on diversity to ALI’s membership and Council election process, effectively bringing more women, minorities, and breadth of practice to the organization. As President, she is also credited with inspiring confidence and participation from all members of the Institute and collegiality through some of the most complex and controversial project discussions.

Her Presidency saw 14 projects completed and 20 projects initiated; Ms. Ramo was a driving force behind the first-ever Restatement of American Indian Law. Having oversight on all projects, she often attended project sessions, and never missed a Council or Annual Meeting. As a member of several nonprofit boards, she also lends her expertise as an Adviser on Restatement of the Law, Charitable Nonprofit Organizations.

In her private practice at Modrall Sperling, she works in the areas of arbitration, mediation, business law, real estate, probate, and estate planning. She often is called on to assist corporations with their strategic and long-term legal planning, an area in which she has particular expertise.

In 2015, Ms. Ramo received the American Bar Association’s highest award, the ABA Medal. She previously served as president of the American Bar Association from 1995 to 1996, the first woman in history to lead the largest nationwide organization of attorneys. In 2011, she was elected into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, adding her name to a prestigious list of members including George Washington and Albert Einstein, among other notables.

A Fellow of both the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel and the American Bar Foundation, she also has served as a panel member for the American Arbitration Association. In 2013, she was elected Board Chair of Think New Mexico, a non-partisan think tank, and she serves as a member of the Board of the Santa Fe Opera and Albuquerque Economic Development.

Ms. Ramo was appointed by the United States Senate and served as co-chair of a committee to review governance issues of the U.S. Olympic Committee in 2003. She was named an honorary member of the Bar of England and Wales, and of Gray’s Inn in 2000. She served on the Board of Regents for the University of New Mexico from 1989 to 1995, and as President of the Board from 1991 to 1993. She also served on the New Mexico Board of Finance.

The below video pays tribute to Ramo’s work as president, with remarks from ALI Council members.

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Did You Know?

Ramo previously served as president of the American Bar Association from 1995 to 1996, the first woman in history to lead the largest nationwide organization of attorneys.

2014

Richard L. Revesz

Director 2014-2022

Richard L. Revesz served as director from 2014 through 2022 and oversaw the completion of 16 projects, four of which were both initiated and completed during his tenure. In addition to these completed projects, the Institute had 13 ongoing projects launched by Revesz when he stepped down as director to assume the role of Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

Revesz was instrumental in changing the way that the Institute’s work is properly cited in The Bluebook. With ALI Council member Robert H. Sitkoff, Revesz met with the leadership of The Bluebook revisions, just as the 20th edition was close to completion, and The American Law Institute is now explicitly acknowledged as the institutional author of its works.

Revesz clarified the way that the Institute numbers its book series. Previously, Restatement series were numbers within a date range of when a project launched. Beginning in 2015, ALI simplified its numbering protocol. Initial versions of a Restatement will be titled “Restatement of the Law” without reference to a numbered series. Restatements that are part of an existing series will remain in that series.

With the new numbering protocol also came a new color scheme for ALI’s published work. Newly published first series Restatements are red. Principles remain Green, books in the Restatement Third series are blue, and new books in the Restatement Fourth series are black.

Revesz worked with ALI President Levi to convene the bipartisan group that published Principles for Electoral Count Act Reform.

The below video pays tribute to Revesz’s work as director, with remarks from ALI Council members.

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Did You Know?

In Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the “War on Coal” Revesz and co-author Jack Lienke chronicle the political compromises that gave rise to grandfathering, its deadly consequences, and the repeated attempts-by presidential administrations of both parties-to make things right.

2017

David F. Levi

President 2017-2026

David F. Levi is the 10th President of the Institute. Prior to his election as president, Levi was a life member of ALI and a member of its Council since 2003. He became ALI's President in May 2017.

Levi is the Levi Family Professor of Law and Judicial Studies and Director of the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke University School of Law. He was previously the James B. Duke and Benjamin N. Duke Dean; the 14th dean of Duke Law School, he served from 2007 to 2018. Prior to this appointment, he was the Chief United States District Judge for the Eastern District of California with chambers in Sacramento. He was appointed United States Attorney by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 and a United States district judge by President George H. W. Bush in 1990.

A native of Chicago, Levi earned his A.B. in history and literature, magna cum laude, from Harvard College. He graduated Order of the Coif in 1980 from Stanford Law School, where he was also president of the Stanford Law Review. Following graduation, he was a law clerk to Judge Ben C. Duniway of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then to Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Levi has served as chair of two Judicial Conference committees by appointment of the Chief Justice. He was chair of the Civil Rules Advisory Committee (2000-2003) and chair of the Standing Committee on the Rules of Practice and Procedure (2003-2007); he was reappointed to serve as a member of that committee (2009-2015). He was the first president and a founder of the Milton L. Schwartz American Inn of Court, now the Schwartz-Levi American Inn of Court, at the King Hall School of Law, University of California at Davis. He was chair of the Ninth Circuit Task Force on Race, Religious and Ethnic Fairness and was an author of the report of the Task Force. He was president of the Ninth Circuit District Judges Association (2003-2005).

In 2007, Levi was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 2010 to 2013, he served on the board of directors of Equal Justice Works. In 2014, he was appointed chair of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the American Judicial System, and in 2015, he was named co-chair of the North Carolina Commission on the Administration of Law and Justice. He became president of The American Law Institute (ALI) in 2017 after serving as a member of the ALI Council and an Adviser to the ALI's Federal Judicial Code Revision and Aggregate Litigation projects.

Levi is the co-author of Federal Trial Objections: Civil and Criminal (James Publishing 2002). At Duke Law, he has taught courses on judicial behavior, ethics, and legal history.

The below tribute video features reflections from several members of the ALI Council honoring Levi and his remarkable tenure as President.

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Did You Know?

Levi entered Harvard’s graduate program in history, specializing in English legal history and serving as a teaching fellow in English history and literature, before completing his law degree.

2023

Diane P. Wood

Director 2023-Present

Diane P. Wood assumed the role of Director in May 2023, being the first woman to hold this position at the Institute. She was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 1995, and served as Chief Judge from 2013 to 2020. Wood assumed senior status in September 2022. She is also a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where she teaches in the areas of federal civil procedure, antitrust law, and international trade and business.

Before her appointment to the bench, Wood was the Harold J. and Marion F. Green Professor of International Legal Studies at the University of Chicago Law School. She also served for two years as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, with responsibility for the Division’s international, appellate, and legal policy matters. In 2015, Wood received the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2015 John S. Sherman Award—the department’s highest antitrust honor.

Elected to ALI in 1990 and to the ALI Council in 2003, Wood has been an influential and active participant in the Institute’s work and its leadership. She has served as an Adviser to Restatement of the Law, The Law of American Indians (Published 2022); Restatement of the Law Fourth, The Foreign Relations Law of the United States – Jurisdiction (Published 2018); Legal and Economic Principles of World Trade Law (Published 2012); Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation (Published 2010); and as U.S. Adviser to Transnational Rules of Civil Procedure (Published 2007). She also served on the Members Consultative Group for Complex Litigation: Statutory Recommendations and Analysis (Published 1994).

As an elected member of the ALI Council, Wood served on the Special Committee on ALI’s 100th Anniversary, through which she played an instrumental role in organizing the forthcoming book chronicling ALI’s history. She also chaired the ALI Early Career Scholars Medal Committee. She was a member of ALI’s Nominating Committee from 2004 to 2016, serving as its chair from 2011 to 2016, and she served on ALI’s Executive Committee from 2012 to 2018.

In addition to her service to ALI, Wood serves on the Board of the American Bar Foundation. She is a former Board member of the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago, which was an organization devoted to teaching elementary and secondary school students about the U.S. legal system. From 2007 to 2013, she served as a member of the Judicial Conference’s Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, and from 2004 to 2007 she was a member of the Judicial Conference’s Committee on International Legal Relations. Wood is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, whose Council she chaired from 2014 to 2022, and where she served as a member of the Commissions on the Humanities and Social Sciences, Languages, and Democratic Citizenship.

Wood received her B.A. and her J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. After law school, she clerked for Judge Irving L. Goldberg of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and for Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court.

2026

Wallace B. Jefferson

President 2026-Present

Wallace B. Jefferson is the 11th President of the Institute. He served on the Supreme Court of Texas from 2001 to 2013 and was Chief Justice from 2004 until the end of his tenure. He made Texas history as the Court’s first African American Justice and Chief Justice. During his time on the bench, he led efforts to expand access to justice, supported reforms to juvenile justice, and oversaw the implementation of a statewide electronic filing system for Texas courts. He also served as President of the Conference of Chief Justices, representing chief justices from all 50 states and U.S. territories.

Jefferson was elected to ALI membership in 2001 and to the Council in 2011. He served as Treasurer of the Institute from 2014 to 2023. He previously served as an Adviser on the Restatement Third, Consumer Contracts project and currently serves as an Adviser on the Restatement of Election Litigation and the Principles of High-Volume Civil Adjudication projects.

Jefferson chaired the Commission to Expand Civil Legal Services for the Texas Supreme Court and serves on the boards of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers, The Holdsworth Center, and Lexitas, and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship. His career reflects a sustained commitment to judicial independence, access to justice, and the effective administration of the law.

Following his judicial tenure, Jefferson returned to private practice and is currently Co-Chair of the Texas Supreme Court and State Appellate Practice at Alexander Dubose & Jefferson. He is a graduate of James Madison College at Michigan State University and The University of Texas School of Law.

1932

The Restatement of the Law of Contracts, which deals with the legal relations between parties to promises and remedies available when a promise is broken, was approved by the Institute in May 1932, the first Restatement to be finished. With Samuel Williston as Reporter and Arthur L. Corbin as Special Adviser and Reporter on Remedies, the work was a legendary success, exercising enormous influence as an authoritative exposition of the subject.

In the nine years during which the work on Contracts was moving forward there were 34 conferences of the Reporters and Advisers each from three to seven days duration, and 51 preliminary drafts were considered. The Council considered 17 Final Preliminary Drafts and submitted Tentative Drafts of various parts of the work for consideration and discussion to eight Annual Meetings.

Reporters
Samuel Williston
Arthur L. Corbin (Remedies)

President at Publication
George W. Wickersham
Elihu Root (Honorary President)

Director at Publication
William Draper Lewis

The Story of ALI

1923

Founding of The American Law Institute

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1928

“A Permanent Organization for the Improvement of the Law”

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1931

Tentative Draft Sales Reported

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1932

ALI’s First Restatement Is Published

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1939

Torts Published

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1945

Annual Meeting Cancelled

1945

ALI and ‘Humanity’s Magna Carta’

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1947

ALI-ABA Is Born

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1952

Work on Restatement Second Begins

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1952

The Uniform Commercial Code (UCC)

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1962

The Model Penal Code

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1965

Foreign Relations Second Published

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1967

Trial Manual Published

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1971

The Boskey Motion

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1978

First Principles Project Launched

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1978

Work on Restatement Third Begins

1979

Torts Second and Strict Liability

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1985

Membership Extended to Foreign Lawyers

1986

Introduction of Members Consultative Groups

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1988

The Henry J. Friendly Medal Established

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1990

John Minor Wisdom Award Established

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1991

Cutter Reporter's Chair Established

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1992

Casner Reporter’s Chair Established

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1992

The Prudent Investor Rule

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1994

First Principles Project Completed

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2000

Going Global: ALI in London

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2006

Distinguished Service Award Established

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2009