Kermit Roosevelt III (University of Pennsylvania): The Third Restatement of Conflict of Laws: Origins and Aspirations

Current Research in Private International Law

  • Date: May 10, 2022
  • Time: 05:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Location: online
About the speaker:
Kermit Roosevelt teaches constitutional law and conflict of laws and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has published scholarly books and articles in both fields, as well as two novels. His most recent book, The Nation that Never Was, offers a new account of the origins of American values and identity. Roosevelt attended Harvard College and Yale Law School and clerked for Supreme Court Justice David Souter before joining the Penn faculty.

About the topic:
During the middle of the twentieth century, American judges and law professors reacted against the territorialist rigidity of the First Restatement of Conflict of Laws, ushering in the chaos of the choice-of-law revolution. The Second Restatement, completed in 1971, won wide acceptance by courts but found less favor with law professors and has not brought order to the field. In 2014, the American Law Institute decided to try again, beginning work on the Third Restatement. What lessons can be learned from the history of American choice of law, and how can those lessons inform the drafting of a new Restatement? Kermit Roosevelt, the Reporter for the Third Restatement, will offer an overview of the current draft that seeks to situate it within the history of American choice of law and suggest the reasons that it takes the form it does.

About the virtual workshop series:
The virtual workshop series “Current Research in Private International Law" is organised by Ralf Michaels and Michael Cremer. The series features guest speakers and Institute staff members who present and discuss their work on current developments and research topics in private international law. The workshops are geared to scholars who are researching in the field of private international law, but attendance is open to all individuals having an academic interest (including doctoral candidates and students).
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