University of Pennsylvania Finding Aids

The American Law Institute (ALI) was founded in 1923 in response to a perceived uncertainty and complexity in American law. Former Penn Law Dean William Draper Lewis was the Institute's first director, running the organization's operations out of his campus office. The ALI was conceived as a representative gathering of the American Bar (including Judges, Lawyers, and Law Professors) for the stated mission "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." To that end, the ALI has held annual meetings since its inception to adopt its restatements and other codification projects, discuss drafts, analyze pending legislation and aspects of the law, set policy, and initialize new projects. The collection, 1923-1995, includes correspondence, addresses and remarks, reports on codification projects and other ALI-related activity, annual meeting programs, yearbooks, proceedings, and related records regarding activity at the ALI's annual meetings.