Reforming the Law Reform Ecosystem

This Article outlines a series of reforms that would make global law reform efforts more effective and efficient. These efforts currently occur primarily in three multilateral organizations (UNCITRAL, UNIDROIT, and the Hague Conference). The member states of these organizations could easily increase coordination—even to the point of de facto consolidation of the organizations’ work—and could increase the attention given to selecting projects and promoting instruments. Additionally, the U.S. government could organize plurilateral law reform efforts outside these organizations and draw on U.S. domestic law reform efforts to identify new topics for work.

Finally, non-government actors could themselves coordinate across the multilateral fora and could use the American Law Institute as a model to develop new lawyer-driven (rather than government-driven) law reform organizations at the global level.