A Principled Approach Toward Insurance Law: The Economics of Insurance and the Current Restatement Project

Abstract

The American Law Institute ("ALI") initiated a project in 2010 to propose the Principles of the Law of Liability Insurance ("Principles"). A Principles project by the ALI is different from a Restatement of Law, for which the ALI is better known. A Restatement seeks to restate the common law of the fifty U.S. jurisdictions in systematized form. The ALI was organized many decades ago to achieve this ambition, in particular to counter the criticism that varying common law principles in the many different states in the U.S. made the law confused and contradictory across the states. The ALI has been successful and has published many volumes of Restatements over the succeeding years, generally disproving this point. A Principles project of the ALI is different. A Principles project proposes to state the law "as it should be," presumably as discussion material or talking points for lawyers and academics to address over some time in the future.