Faculty Shaping Law Through Key Roles on American Law Institute Projects

Brooklyn Law School faculty continue to shape the law through membership in the American Law Institute (ALI), the leading independent organization in the United States producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law. Currently, seven faculty members are playing key roles as reporters or advisers on ALI projects, with several others contributing as part of members’ consultative groups.

Professor Neil Cohen, an expert in international commercial law, serves as co-reporter on the Institute’s newest project (and first-ever collaboration with the European Law Institute), Principles for a Data Economy. The project will study, identify, and collate a common set of legal principles governing transactions in the newest major component of the international economy—data that is traded as a commodity. Professor Christina Mulligan, whose scholarship addresses efforts to adapt intellectual property law for the digital age, was invited by ALI to serve as an adviser on the project.

Cohen also serves as an adviser on ALI’s Restatement of the Law Third, Conflict of Laws. He previously served as reporter for the Institute’s Restatement of the Law Third, Suretyship and Guaranty and held the endowed reporter’s chair, the R. Ammi Cutter Reporter. Fellow Brooklyn Law Professor Aaron Twerski was subsequently appointed to the same endowed chair when he served as co-reporter on a separate ALI project, Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Products Liability.

Professors James Fanto and Brian Lee also serve as reporters on ALI projects—Lee on Restatement of the Law Fourth, Property and Fanto on Principles of Compliance, Risk Management, and Enforcement. Professor Miriam Baer, also an ALI member, serves as an adviser on the latter project. Also serving as advisers on current projects are I. Bennett Capers on Model Penal Code: Sexual Assault and Related Offenses, and Anita Bernstein on Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Intentional Torts to Persons.

A project is undertaken by the Institute only upon careful consideration and prior approval of its officers and the Council, ALI's governing body. The draft of the project is prepared by one or more reporters and associate reporters, usually distinguished academics, with input from a diverse group of advisers, ALI members, and Council.

ALI drafts, discusses, revises, and publishes Restatements of the Law, Model Codes, and Principles of Law that are enormously influential in the courts and legislatures, as well as in legal scholarship and education. By participating in the Institute’s work, its distinguished members have the opportunity to influence the development of the law in both existing and emerging areas and to work with other eminent lawyers, judges, and academics, giving back to a profession to which they are deeply dedicated and contributing to the public good.

ALI membership is gained only through election by existing ALI members and is limited to 3,000 individuals (excluding life, honorary, and ex-officio members) who comprise eminent lawyers, judges, and law professors from across the United States and around the world.

Other Brooklyn Law School faculty who are ALI members include Interim Dean Maryellen Fullerton and Professors William Araiza, Dana Brakman Reiser, Marsha Garrison, Edward Janger, Beryl Jones-Woodin, Roberta Karmel, Samuel Murumba, Alice Ristroph, Elizabeth Schneider, and Winnie Taylor, as well as Professors Emeriti William Hellerstein, Norman Poser, and Joan Wexler.

Read more about the American Law Institute here.