Conceptual Foundations

The Restatement format is so formidable and authoritative that it virtually overwhelms a prospective reviewer. Within its four corners it offers an instance of perfected workmanship that warrants the praise that it habitually elicits, but it tends for this very reason to make criticism seem captious at best, and more likely, arbitrary or insufficiently informed. In considering the opening sections of this Restatement of Foreign Relations Law it might be helpful to comment first on the process itself. Unless we become somewhat reflective about format and auspices, we can neither appreciate the achievement, nor grasp its goals and inevitable constraints. One feature of the Restatement is its evident obsession with drafting precision and accuracy of detail. I doubt whether there is a single comma misplaced or citation mistaken.in the entire two volumes. As such, we are treated to a spectacle of the legal practitioners' craft, a function of which is to convey authority and inspire confidence by its mastery of technical language. Such attention to detail is as vocationally valued as is ingenuity and clarity of argument or the breadth and depth of scholarly research. Perhaps this enormous effort to be precise is, in part, a legacy of pre-modern law, which stressed the precision of forms as a principal basis of ascertaining rights and duties. More interesting and consequential is the institutional assurance claimed on behalf of the Restatement by its sponsors. The authoritativeness of the venture rests on the backing of the American Law Institute (ALI) and a work process that is at once exhaustive and exhausting. The Institute consists of 1500 judges, academics, and practitioners (augmented by 300 ex officio memberslaw school deans, state chief judges, presidents of state bar associations), who are generally regarded as "the cream" of the legal profession at any given time. The Reporters of each Restatement are eminent academic figures appointed by the Institute, and it is they, as assisted by an array of advisers, who do the initial drafting. Yet the process is distinctive partly because it submits the work of these renowned specialists to assessment by the