What I Like Most About the Restatement (Second) of Conflicts, and Why it Should not be Thrown out With the Bathwater

Abstract

I’m a recent convert to the Restatement (Second) of Conflicts. In my thirty years of teaching the course, it’s been all too easy to parrot the conventional wisdom—that the Second Restatement is conceptually muddled, self-contradictory, and bordering on vacuous. I am now convinced, however, that there are both intellectual consistency and practical wisdom in its approach. (What better time to make this discovery than just as the American Law Institute decides to replace it?) I summarize below my reasons for believing that substantial parts of the Second Restatement’s basic structure should be left as is.