Book Review: The American Law Institute: A Centenary History (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Andrew S Gold and Robert W Gordon (eds)

Abstract

Corbin’s reflections on his Restatement of the Law of Contracts began with a resigned note: “In undertaking to draft a formal Restatement of any branch of the law, there is involved an assumption that a common law exists”. That was no mere modesty topos. It identified the raison d’être of the American Law Institute and the occasion for its Restatements – the need to identify uniformity in a system that denies any national common law and admits of no less than fifty-one ‘common laws’. This book celebrates the centenary of an institution dedicated to that feat.