American Law Institute

The American Law Institute (ALI) is a research and advocacy group of judges, lawyers, and legal scholars limited to 3,000 elected members and established in 1923 to promote the clarification and simplification of United States common law and its adaptation to changing social needs. Additional goals noted were "to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work." Members of ALI include law professors, practicing attorneys, judges and other professionals in the legal industry. The committee that issued report recommending the Institute be formed consisted of some of the best known members of these groups, e.g. Elihu Root, George W. Wickersham, William Draper Lewis, Joseph Henry Beale, Benjamin N. Cardozo, Arthur Corbin, Ernst Freund, Learned Hand, Roscoe Pound, Harlan F. Stone, John Henry Wigmore, and Samuel Williston. ALI writes documents known as "treatises", which are summaries of generally state court common law (legal principles that come out of U.S. state court decisions, compare federal common law -- most common law in the U.S. is developed at the state level). Many courts and legislatures look to ALI's treatises as authoritative reference material concerning many legal issues. However, some legal experts and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, along with some conservative commentators, have voiced concern about ALI rewriting the law.

The ALI drafts, approves, and publishes Restatements of the Law, Principles of the Law, model acts, and other proposals for law reform. The ALI is headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

At any time, ALI is engaged in up to 20 projects examining the law. Some current projects have been watched closely by the media, particularly the revision of the Model Penal Code Sexual Assault provisions.