ALI and the Pending Restatement of Employment Law

Last Thursday May 15th, Matt Finkin (Illinois), on behalf of the Labor Law Trust Group, submitted a petition asking the ALI to terminate the projected Restatement of Employment Law, and moved that consideration of the draft be tabled pending consultation with the Group.(Letter Attached).

Among other things, the petition states that:

The undersigned are professors of labor and employment law in accredited schools of law in the United States . . . . We have followed the development of the proposed Restatement of the Law of Employment—notably Parts 3 (on contractual job security), 4 (on public policy as a limit on discharge), and 5 (on employee privacy)—with increasing concern.  As with all Restatements, the purpose is to provide simple blackletter rules that better adapt the law to changing social and economic conditions.  However, we believe the Restatement methodology, in this setting, to be not only inadequate but counterproductive.

Full disclosure: I am one of the signers of the petition. 

The ALI reports the status of the project this way: "At its October 2007 meeting, the ALI Council unanimously approved Council Draft No. 2, subject to changes the Reporters will make in response to discussion at the meeting and to editorial and other minor improvements. A Tentative Draft will be submitted to the membership at the 2008 Annual Meeting on Wednesday, May 21."

So a discussion of the Restatement project is scheduled at the ALI Annual Meeting tomorrow in Washington D.C.  The tentative schedule shows that Sam Estreicher (NYU), Stewart Schwab (Cornell), and Michael Harper (Boston Univ.), are scheduled to make a presentation on the Restatement tomorrow starting at 9 AM EDT.

We hope to have additional commentary once that presentation has occurred and perhaps, a vote has been taken.

PS