Abstract
For more than a century, the American Law Institute (ALI) has developed Restatements of the Law to educate judges and the broader legal community on the most carefully reasoned common law rules articulated by courts. The judiciary’s frequent reliance on restatements has made the ALI one of the most influential private organizations in the development of American law. This Article explains that such reliance appears increasingly misplaced because the ALI has made a conscious decision in modern restatements to adopt provisions that plainly do not “restate” the law of any jurisdiction. Instead, the ALI has used modern restatements to advance novel, aspirational legal rules expressing what the law “ought to be.” In doing so, the ALI has invited a potentially irreparable credibility crisis. This Article examines the evolution of modern restatements, detailing how the ALI has incrementally pushed—and at times openly defied—its own standards to invent new legal rules for courts to adopt. This Article concludes by proposing reforms to mitigate the ALI’s self-inflicted reputational harm before judges and other users no longer rely upon restatements as authoritative.
Recommended Citation
Appel, Christopher E.
(2025)
"The American Law Institute's Impending Credibility Crisis: A Review of Modern Restatements of the Law,"
University of Florida Journal of Law & Public Policy: Vol. 36:
Iss.
1, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/jlpp/vol36/iss1/3