Since 1923, the American Law Institute (ALI) has sought to “restate” American law. This means seeking coherent and progressive doctrine in the confusion of common-law decisions by judges. Note that unlike countries with a unified legal system, the United States has fifty states, each with its own rules as to many areas of public and private law. The ALI, a private organization, is a primary source of legal unification.

The Institute has also worked on reforming other areas of law, for example criminal law and tax law. And in recent years it has sought to be helpful internationally, for example in the project on Transnational Civil Procedure, cosponsored with Unidroit, and in its attempt to assist coordination of transnational bankruptcies in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. Aside, however, from a chapter in our Restatement Third, the Foreign Relations Law of the United States, which antedated the present World Trade Organization regime, the current project represents the Institute's first effort to engage with trade law.

The law of international trade is at an early stage of development. Trade, of course, is old, and so are bilateral and some multilateral attempts to establish rules. But the World Trade Organization (WTO), with its elaborate dispute-resolution system, is only nine years old, and so far there have been fewer than sixty decisions by the Appellate Body.