Tracey Maclin and Linda McClain Elected to the American Law Institute
Two professors of law join the leading independent organization in the US producing scholarly work to clarify, modernize, and improve the law.
Professors Tracey Maclin and Linda C. McClain have been elected to the American Law Institute (ALI), an organization dedicated to producing scholarship that clarifies, modernizes, and improves the law. Members include notable legal scholars, practitioners, and judges. Maclin and McClain are part of a class of 42 new participants.
Founded in 1923 as the “Committee on the Establishment of a Permanent Organization for the Improvement of the Law,” the organization works to reduce the uncertainty and complexity in American law by seeking agreement in common law and reducing variations within jurisdictions across the United States. To accomplish its goals, the ALI issues several types of publications, including Restatements of the Law, collections of case law on subjects undertaken by the organization intended to inform judges and lawyers of the general principles of common law, and Principles of the Law, which address legal areas found to be in need of reform, and suggest extensive recommendations for altering the law.
Each publication takes shape as a series of drafts written and reviewed by ALI members over several years. Current projects include Restatements of Laws pertaining to the law of American Indians, conflict of laws, and copyright, and Principles of the Law around government ethics, police investigations, and data privacy. Professor McClain will contribute to two Restatements of the Law projects: Children and the Law and Sexual and Gender-Based Misconduct on Campus.
Joseph Lipsitt Faculty Research Scholar and Professor of Law Tracey Maclin is a noted Fourth Amendment scholar and author of The Supreme Court and the Fourth Amendment’s Exclusionary Rule. Professor Maclin has served as counsel of record for the ACLU, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and the Cato Institute in Supreme Court cases involving the Fourth Amendment. He is the 1995 recipient of the Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, Boston University’s highest teaching award. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at BU Law, Professor Maclin has held visiting law professorships at Harvard and Cornell Universities.
Paul M. Siskind Research Scholar and Professor of Law Linda C. McClain is nationally known for her scholarship in family law, feminist legal theory, and gender and law. Her current research examines controversies over claims of conscience and the scope of religious liberty in the context of marriage equality, antidiscrimination laws, and reproductive issues. She is the author or co-author of six books: Contemporary Family Law; Gay Rights and the Constitution; Ordered Liberty: Rights, Responsibilities, and Virtues; The Place of Families; Gender Equality: Dimensions of Women’s Equal Citizenship; and What Is Parenthood? Contemporary Debates About the Family. During the 2016–2017 academic year, she will be a Laurance S. Rockefeller Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values.
