Waxing State, Waning Family: The Radical Agenda of the American Law Institute

William C. Duncan writes at the Family in America: “Of the elites advocating invasive legal interventions, none is more exclusive than the American Law Institute; no proposals for the expansion of the state into the family domain better illustrate the expansive tendency of the law than its recent proposals for a revolutionary overhaul of American family law . . . As Professor Carl Schneider has noted, the ALI ‘has long since ceased to regard itself as just a source of technical proficiency in the law and has come to value itself as a source of social policy.’ Thus, in 2000, the organization adopted the Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution. The Principles are squarely in the “reform” arena and make no claim on representing the state of the law in matters of divorce as well as child custody and visitation. In fact, they propose radical changes that go to the root of the law’s understanding of the family.”

Hat tip: Ruth Institute