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National Resources Committee 



of expressing and developing law by the judicial process; not to 

 destroy that system by ossifying existing legal rules in all 

 their minutiae. 



In spite of its essential difference from any other legal 

 work, the restatement is a natural, and indeed inevitable, 

 development of our legal institutions. The common la^v, though 

 it tends to correspond as nearly as may be to the sense of 

 Justice in the community, has been developed as stated solely 

 by the legal profession working mainly through the operation of 

 the courts in the process of deciding cases. The vast and ever- 

 increasing volume of decisions and the numerous instances in 

 which the decisions are irreconcilable has resulted in unneces- 

 sary uncertainty as to what the law is. The leaders of the 

 profession who founded the Institute recognized that to preserve 

 the common law system it is necessary for flie legal professi<in, 

 by which that system has been developed, to provide an agency 

 which will counteract this undue tendency to uncertainty. 

 The Institute is this agency. The function of the courts is 

 to decide the controversies brought before them. The function 

 of the Institute is to state clearly and precisely in the light of 

 the decisions the principles and rules of the common law. 



The sections of the restatement express the result of a care- 

 ful analysis of the subject and a thorough examination aud 

 discussion of pertinent cases — often very numerous and some- 

 times conflicting. As stated the accuracy of the statements of 

 law made rests on the authority of the Institute. They may 

 be regarded both as the product of expert opinion and as the 

 expression of the law by the legal profession. * * * 



In the restatement of contracts, the profession has what it 

 has never had before — a positive assertion of a legal rule, 

 enunciated after years of study and expert advice, by a body 

 which is representative of the profession in the best sense of 

 that word. • • * 



Furthermore, though the Institute in this Restatement is not 

 engaged in reforming law, by giving an authoritative state- 

 ment of the rules of tliat great body of law which we lawyers 

 call "commou," we are reducing greatly the cost of litigation 

 and we are inevitably promoting the intelligent improvement 

 of the law. 



In addition to its work of restating the common law, 

 the Institute has rendered a great service to the im- 

 provement of judicial administration through the 

 prepaiation of a Model Code of Criminal Procedtire, 

 the official draft of which was published in 1930. 



Generally speaking, it appears that the work of the 

 Institute supplements in an important way that of the 

 National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform 

 State Laws. Both are seeking to improve the substan- 

 tive content and form of the law and in so doing are 

 facilitating greatly the task of our legislative bodies.'"' 



"■ For information regarding the InstUute. see : The American Laic 

 Institute: A Short Summary of Pertinent Facts, pnbllshed by ■the Insti- 

 tute In 1932 : the Reports of the Annual Proceedings of the American 

 Bar Association and articles In The American Bar Association Journal. 



