Texas Law Professor Joshua Sellers was elected on Dec. 14 to the American Law Institute. Sellers was also named as an adviser to the forthcoming Restatement of the Law, Election Litigation Project. He becomes the 29th member of the current research faculty to be elected to ALI membership and joins a distinguished list of Texas Law professors to be involved in the writing of one of ALI’s Restatements.
Also elected were two alumni: Richard Farrer ’05, a federal magistrate judge for the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, and Jason P. Steed ’09, a seasoned appellate attorney who now teaches at the University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law.
“I’m incredibly honored to join the eminent membership of the American Law Institute,” says Sellers, who joined the Texas Law faculty only this past August. “And I look forward to working on the Restatement of the Law, Election Litigation Project, with reporters Lisa Marshall Manheim and Derek Muller.”
The ALI, which has celebrated its centenary throughout 2023, is the nation’s leading independent organization producing scholarly work to clarify and modernize—and, in its description, to “otherwise improve”—the law.
Texas Law connections to the ALI run deep. The organization’s current director is Diane P. Wood ’75, the former Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit who became the first woman to lead the century-old organization when she assumed her role on May 1, 2023, succeeding Richard L. Revesz.
This past year, Texas Law has also hosted a traveling exhibit in the Tarlton Law Library that highlights the institute’s groundbreaking and impactful work.
Materials in the exhibit include original documents, objects, and historical displays that tell the story of the Institute’s century of work, along with materials that have been customized for the Texas Law community, including sections that honor former Deans Ward Farnsworth and William C. Powers Jr., and long-time Professor Charles Alan Wright, who also served as ALI president. All three served as ALI reporters:
- Farnsworth was a reporter for “Restatement of the Law Third, Torts: Liability of Economic” (2020) while he was dean of Texas Law.
- Powers served twice as co-reporter and was named as a reporter for the third time for one of ALI’s newest projects prior to his death in 2019.
- Wright served as the seventh president of ALI from 1993-2000, the first law professor to hold the position in the institute’s history. His many contributions included serving as a reporter and an adviser to different publications and overseeing seven projects, including ALI’s first Principles project: “Principles of the Law, Corporate Governance” (1994). One of Wright’s major goals as ALI president was for the institute to expand its examination of the law on a global scale, a vision that continues today.
In addition, faculty members Linda Mullenix, Charles Silver, and Jay Westbrook, all of whom contributed to ALI publications, are recognized. The display features as well a list of 28 current Texas Law faculty who are members of the institute, a group which Sellers now joins.
“The ALI’s great decision to elect Josh to its membership only confirms what we already know: that he is a world-class scholar and extraordinary colleague,” says Dean Bobby Chesney, himself a member of the ALI since 2007. “I am incredibly glad to see him recognized this way.”