Post date: December 18, 2000

Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren has been named the second vice president of the American Law Institute, a 77-year-old scholarly institution dedicated to clarifying and adapting the law to better suit society's needs.

Professor Warren succeeds Conrad K. Harper who will become the ALI's first vice president. A 1965 graduate of Harvard Law School, Mr. Harper is also a member of the Harvard Corporation.

An authority on bankruptcy and commercial law, Professor Warren joined the Law School faculty in 1995 and has received the prestigious Sacks and Freund Award for Teaching Excellence. Professor Warren has written extensively on bankruptcy and the effects of debt on society. She is a co-author of As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Law in America (1989), which won the ABA's Silver Gavel Award and was a finalist for the award of the American Sociological Association as the best book of the year. She is also co-author of The Fragile Middle Class (2000), as well as of The Law of Debtors and Creditors (1986).

Professor Warren was first elected to the American Law Institute in 1986 and joined its governing council in 1993.

Founded in 1923 and based in Philadelphia, the American Law Institute drafts and publishes restatements of the law, model codes, and other proposals for legal reform to clarify and simplify the application of the law to society. Its membership consists of judges, practicing lawyers, and legal scholars from across the United States and around the world.