Rosenbury elected to American Law Institute

Laura Rosenbury, JD, associate dean for research and faculty development and professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, has been elected to the American Law Institute (ALI), a national independent organization that focuses on producing scholarly work to clarify and modernize the law.

Membership in the ALI is based on professional achievement and a demonstrated interest in improving the law. Rosenbury is an expert on the law’s role in defining gender and personal relationships. Among other topics, she examines family property distribution and the ways that default rules concerning such distribution shape general understandings of the meaning of family and of the obligations of individual family members to one another and to the state.

She regularly presents her scholarship throughout the United States and is the co-author of Feminist Jurisprudence: Cases and Materials as well as the author or co-author of numerous law review articles. She serves on the boards of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Trusts and Estates and of Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty Inc.

As a member of the ALI, Rosenbury will join other members who participate in ALI’s work by attending annual meetings, commenting on drafts, taking part in individual ALI projects, serving as ALI-American Bar Association (ABA) speakers, and/or authoring ALI-ABA publications.

Given Rosenbury’s research interests, she particularly looks forward to future projects concerning family law topics, trusts and estates, and property more generally.

Rosenbury joins a number of other WUSTL law faculty who are members of the ALI, including:

  • Susan Frelich Appleton, JD, the Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins Professor of Law (who also holds the office of secretary and serves on the ALI Council);
  • Kathleen Brickey, JD, the James Carr Professor of Criminal Jurisprudence;
  • Kathleen Clark, JD, professor of law;
  • Michael Greenfield, JD, the George Alexander Madill Professor of Contracts & Commercial Law;
  • Daniel Keating, JD, the Tyrrell Williams Professor of Law;
  • Pauline Kim, JD, the Charles Nagel Professor of Constitutional Law and Political Science;
  • Stephen Legomsky, JD, DPhil, the John S. Lehmann University Professor;
  • Charles McManis, JD, the Thomas and Karole Green Professor of Law;
  • Kimberly Norwood, JD, professor of law;
  • Leila Nadya Sadat, JD, the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law and director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute;
  • Hillary Sale, JD, the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law;
  • Kent Syverud, JD, dean of the School of Law and the Ethan A.H. Shepley University Professor and associate vice chancellor of Washington, D.C., programs; and
  • Dorsey D. Ellis Jr., JD, dean emeritus and the William R. Orthwein Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus.

Founded in 1923, ALI produces the influential Restatements of the Law, model statutes, and Principles of the Law. Its publications are distributed widely and often are cited in court opinions.

The organization defines its mission as “promoting the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs; securing the better administration of justice; and encouraging and carrying on scholarly and scientific legal work.”

The ALI’s Restatements of the Law — publications that serve to clarify what the law says on a basic legal subject — cover such topics as: agency, conflict of laws, contracts, judgments, property, restitution, security, torts, trusts, foreign relations law of the United States, the law governing lawyers, suretyship and guaranty, and unfair competition.

Its Principles of the Law — examinations and analyses of legal areas the ALI believes are in need of reform — include publications on: aggregate litigation, corporate governance, family dissolution, software contracts, transnational civil procedure, transnational insolvency, and transnational intellectual property, as well as a proposed revision of selected portions of the Federal Judicial Code.

In addition, the ALI participates in the development of the Uniform Commercial Code and collaborates with the ABA to form the ALI-ABA Continuing Professional Education program.