A Restatement of the Law is a scholarly summary of American common law on a given subject, published by the American Law Institute (ALI) and organized into numbered sections that each contain a rule, an explanation, short hypothetical examples, and citations to the cases the rule came from. Courts across the country treat Restatements as highly persuasive, and in many instances individual provisions have been adopted as binding law within a jurisdiction.
What a Restatement Is and Who Writes It
The ALI has published Restatements on more than 30 legal subjects, including contracts, torts, property, agency, trusts, restitution, conflict of laws, employment law, corporate governance, liability insurance, and the foreign relations law of the United States.1The American Law Institute. Publications Larger subjects get broken into specialized volumes. Torts, for example, has separate Restatements covering products liability, apportionment of liability, economic harm, intentional torts, and medical malpractice.
Restatements come in series, and the series number tells you which generation of the project you’re reading. The ALI produced nine original Restatements between its founding in 1923 and the end of World War II; those first-series volumes were mostly bare rule statements with minimal commentary. The Second series launched in 1952 with more extensive explanations. The Third series began in 1987 with still more detailed commentary and heavier citation to case law. A Fourth series launched in 2012 with the Foreign Relations Law of the United States and is still being developed.2The ALI Adviser. The Restatements – First, Second, Third A citation like “Restatement (Second) of Contracts” is telling you the subject and the series in one line.
The Four Parts of a Restatement Entry
Each section of a Restatement follows the same four-part format: a black-letter rule, comments, illustrations, and reporter’s notes.3Cornell Law Institute. Restatement of the Law Reading them in that order walks you from the general rule down to concrete applications and finally to the sources behind the rule.
Black-Letter Rule
The black-letter rule is the headline, a concise statement of the governing legal principle stripped of context. It tells you what the law requires or prohibits. The black-letter rule of Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A, for example, states that anyone who sells a product in a defective and unreasonably dangerous condition is liable for physical harm to the end user, regardless of how careful the seller was.4Open Casebook. Restatement (Second) of Torts Section 402A One sentence, one doctrine.
Comments
Comments follow the black-letter rule and explain the reasoning behind it, the policies it serves, and the edges of its application. The comments to § 402A, for example, clarify that the section creates strict liability, meaning a seller can be held responsible even if it exercised all possible care in making and selling the product. Comments also mark what the rule does not cover, which is often the most useful piece for a reader trying to figure out whether a situation falls inside or outside the section.
Illustrations
Illustrations are the examples. They sit inside the comments and present short hypothetical fact patterns, usually only a few sentences long, that show how the black-letter rule plays out in a concrete scenario. The parties are generic (A, B, C) and real-world detail is stripped out on purpose. By isolating the legal elements, an illustration lets you compare your own facts to the pattern and see whether the rule should apply.
Reporter’s Notes
Reporter’s notes come last and point to the court decisions, law review articles, and other authorities that shaped the rule. One caveat matters: reporter’s notes reflect the individual reporter’s views and do not represent the official position of the ALI, unlike the black-letter rules, comments, and illustrations, which are formally approved by ALI membership.3Cornell Law Institute. Restatement of the Law If you’re tracing how a rule developed across jurisdictions, this is where you start.
A Worked Example: Section 90 and Section 402A
Two Restatement sections show the structure in action and are the ones most people encounter first.
Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 90 addresses promissory estoppel. The black-letter rule provides that a promise is enforceable when the person making it should reasonably expect it to cause the other person to act (or hold back from acting), the other person does act in reliance on that promise, and enforcing the promise is the only way to avoid injustice.5Open Casebook. Restatement Second of Contracts Section 90 – Promissory Estoppel The illustrations underneath present simple stories: A promises something, B rearranges their affairs in reliance on the promise, and the question is whether a court should hold A to it. Some illustrations give you facts where enforcement is appropriate; others show facts where the reliance was unreasonable or the injustice too minor to warrant enforcement. The illustrations do the teaching the rule alone cannot.
Restatement (Second) of Torts § 402A works the same way for strict products liability. The black-letter rule holds sellers liable for defective, unreasonably dangerous products. The comments explain that fault is irrelevant. The illustrations walk through scenarios that either do or do not meet the “defective and unreasonably dangerous” standard.
Lawyers use these illustrations as comparison tools. If a client’s facts closely resemble an illustration where the rule applied, the lawyer cites the illustration in support. If the facts diverge, the lawyer explains why the outcome should differ. That compare-and-contrast move is one of the most common uses of a Restatement in practice.
How Much Weight a Restatement Carries
Restatements are secondary authority, not primary law. Judges are not required to follow them the way they must follow a statute or binding precedent. Courts treat them as highly persuasive guidance, and the weight any given court gives them varies.6Legal Information Institute. Persuasive Authority In areas where local case law is thin, that persuasive weight can be considerable.
The picture changes when a court formally adopts a Restatement provision into its jurisdiction’s common law. Section 402A is the most famous example. After its publication in 1964, courts across the country adopted its strict-liability framework, and once a jurisdiction adopts a provision through a judicial opinion, that provision carries the same binding force as any other court-made rule in that jurisdiction. The provision stops being persuasive and becomes the law.
Series matter here too. The Restatement (Third) of Torts: Products Liability later superseded § 402A, addressing issues that had become contentious but were not part of the products liability landscape when the original was written.7The American Law Institute. Torts: Products Liability Not every jurisdiction has moved to the newer version, so in some states the Second Restatement still controls. Check which version your jurisdiction follows before relying on either.
Statutes are a separate matter. When a Restatement provision conflicts with a statute, the statute wins. Restatements are written from the perspective of a common-law judge and operate in the spaces where legislatures have not spoken. Sometimes the direction reverses and legislatures codify Restatement rules directly: every state enacted laws aligning with the prudent-investor rule from the Restatement (Third) of Trusts by 2006.8The American Law Institute. When Legislatures and Agencies Rely on Restatements of the Law Once that happens, you cite the statute, not the Restatement, because the statute is now the governing authority.
Where to Read a Restatement
Full Restatement texts are not freely available online, which catches many researchers off guard. The main digital access points are Westlaw and LexisNexis, both of which carry searchable, up-to-date Restatement texts along with annotations showing how courts have cited each section. Both are subscription services. HeinOnline also hosts a dedicated American Law Institute Library with current and historical Restatement texts.9HeinOnline. American Law Institute Library
Without a subscription, a law library is the practical option. University law school libraries typically carry the complete physical sets, including appendix volumes that track judicial citations, and many are open to the public for in-person use. County and bar association law libraries often carry Restatements and may offer free terminals with Westlaw or LexisNexis. Bar association members in more than 80 national, state, and county bars have free access to Fastcase (now merged with vLex), though its Restatement coverage is more limited than the major subscription databases.10Fastcase. Fastcase – Beyond Research