Restatement and Reform: A New Perspective on the Origins of the American Law Institute

Abstract

At the December, 1945, annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools, William Draper Lewis, who had directed the American Law Institute since its founding, made a startling confession about the founding of the ALI. Everett Fraser, then president of the AALS, had enticed Lewis to speak by complimenting the former University of Pennsylvania Law School dean: “People [at the AALS] talked of a Juristic Center. In the American Law Institute you made it a reality.” There was some truth to this—Lewis was the driving force behind the creation of the ALI. Fraser nevertheless mischaracterized Lewis's achievement. According to an unpublished, recently discovered typescript of Lewis's informal remarks, Lewis chided Fraser, “you know that there is not a word of truth in what [you] said… [because in] doing what I could to establish the American Law Institute, I did not create but rather for the time being killed any attempt to establish a legal center.” Lewis conceded many members of the AALS in the early 1920s “desired to start a Judicial Center conceived of as a place where law professors could meet, usually in the summer, discuss law, carry on legal researches and write legal books.” Lewis claimed he had torpedoed that plan; he had something very different in mind for the ALI “Elihu Root and [I] used this [AALS Committee on a Juristic Center] to summon a group of prominent lawyers to meet with the members of the Committee, and that by the work of that larger group grew the American Law Institute and its Restatement of the Law… it is not true that the American Law Institute is a Juristic Center. It is what Mr. Root and I intended it to be: an organization to carry out specific legal projects for the constructive improvement of the law and its administration.”