Editing American Law Institute (section)

==History==
[[File:ALI.headquarters.JPG|thumb|The American Law Institute's headquarters in [[Philadelphia]]]]

The movement that led to ALI's founding began in 1888.  Law professor Henry Taylor Terry, then teaching in Japan, wrote that year to the [[American Bar Association]] (ABA) to recommend that it should solicit proposals for a "complete scientific arrangement of the whole body” of the law, and in response, the ABA set up a special committee on classification of law.  James DeWitt Andrews, chair of the committee from 1901 to 1908, then launched his own ''Corpus Juris'' project in 1910, and in 1913, founded the American Academy of Jurisprudence (AAJ) to build the ''Corpus Juris'' jointly with the ABA.  Andrews and his supporters proposed that the ''Corpus Juris'' would be systematically compiled with the assistance of leading experts in each field of American law.  They argued that the ''Corpus Juris'' would be more comprehensive, authoritative, and accurate than existing treatises and digests like the [[West American Digest System]], and they regarded the lawyers who worked on such digests, such as [[West (publisher)|West Publishing's]] attorney-editors, as second- and third-rate mediocrities.  However, Andrews ran into staunch resistance from the very legal academics whom he needed to rally behind him to make such a project possible, especially [[John Henry Wigmore]], dean of [[Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law|Northwestern University School of Law]].  Separately from the legal practitioners at the ABA, the legal academics at the [[Association of American Law Schools]] (AALS) formed committees to study the creation of a "national center for study of law and jurisprudence" in 1915, and a "juristic center" in 1916.  The ABA finally pulled the plug on the hapless Andrews in 1923, who was still trying to rally support for the AAJ and what he was now calling a ''Codex Library'', and threw its support behind the AALS's proposal for the founding of a "juristic center", which evolved into ALI.  What seems to have finally united the ABA and the AALS behind the foundation of ALI in 1923 was the shared perception that "Andrews and his Academy of Jurisprudence should not be entrusted with the task of classifying and restating American law".<ref name="Seipp_Page_47">{{cite book |last1=Seipp |first1=David J. |editor1-last=Gold |editor1-first=Andrew S. |editor2-last=Gordon |editor2-first=Robert W. |title=The American Law Institute: A Centennial History |date=2023 |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |isbn=9780197685341 |pages=27–50 |doi=10.1093/oso/9780197685341.003.0003|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kYy0EAAAQBAJ&pg=PA47 |access-date=September 2, 2023 |chapter=The Need for Restatement of the Common Law: A Long Look Back}}</ref> 

The ALI was founded in 1923 on the initiative of [[William Draper Lewis]], Dean of the [[University of Pennsylvania Law School]], following a study by a group of prominent American judges, lawyers, and teachers who sought to address the uncertain and complex nature of early 20th century American law. According to the "Committee on the Establishment of a Permanent Organization for the Improvement of the Law," part of the law's uncertainty stemmed from the lack of agreement on fundamental principles of the common-law system, while the law's complexity was attributed to the numerous variations within different jurisdictions. The committee recommended that a perpetual society be formed to improve the law and the administration of justice in a scholarly and scientific manner.<ref name="ALI_At_50">[https://books.google.com/books?id=eV9Y5Dx-zfcC&pg=PA761 ''ABA Journal'']  "The A.L.I. at 50", ''American Bar Association'', 1973, page 761. Retrieved June 21, 2018.</ref>

The organization was incorporated on February 23, 1923, at a meeting called by the committee in the auditorium of [[Memorial Continental Hall]] in [[Washington, D.C.]] According to ALI's Certificate of Incorporation, its purpose is "to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work".<ref name="ALI_At_50" />