The Restatement of the Conflict of Laws

This latest product of the American Law Institute bears the unmistakable imprimatur of the man who has done most in this country to make popular the teaching of the Conflict of Laws. To Professor Beale more than to any other man is due the credit for the place of prominence that the subject of Conflicts now has in the curricula of American law schools. For more than thirty years he and his students, known collectively as the American territorial or pseudo-territorial "school", have dominated our academic thought on choice-of-law problems. That this group should have a paramount influence in determining the content of the Restatement was to be expected; and the completed work does very largely reflect their views.Though the fallacies and general insufficiency of the doctrines of the territorial school have already been pointed out by various writers, any adequate evaluation of the Restatement must, because of the origin of the work, begin with an examination of the theoretical foundations upon which Professor Beale and his followers have built.