In American jurisprudence, the Restatements of the Law are a set of treatises on legal subjects that seek to inform judges and lawyers about general principles of common law. There are now four series of Restatements, all published by the American Law Institute, an organization of judges, legal academics, and practitioners founded in 1923. Connection with the rule of precedent Individual Restatement volumes are essentially compilations of case law, which are common law judge-made doctrines that develop gradually over time because of the principle of stare decisis (precedent). Although Restatements of the Law are not binding authority in and of themselves, they are highly persuasive because they are formulated over several years with extensive input from law professors, practicing attorneys, and judges. They are meant to reflect the consensus of the American legal community as to what the law is, and, in some cases, what it should become. As Harvard Law School describes the Restatements of the Law: Each Restatement section includes a black-letter principle, comments, and illustrations, and, in the form of reporters' notes, a detailed discussion of all the cases that went into the principle summarized in that one section. By citing a Restatement section in a legal brief, a lawyer may bring to the attention of a judge a carefully studied summary of court action on almost any common law legal doctrine. The judge can then consider the Restatement section and make an informed decision as to how to apply it in the case at hand. While courts are under no formal obligation to adopt Restatement sections as the law, they often do because such sections accurately restate the already-established law in that jurisdiction, or on issues of first impression, and are persuasive in terms of demonstrating the current trend that other jurisdictions are following. Restatements are rare in common law jurisdictions outside of the United States, where law reports are more frequent. Former Justice of the High Court of Australia William Gummow attributes the requirement for Restatements in the United States to the lack of a nationwide court of final common law adjudication. On subjects where the law is not settled or states differ too widely, the ALI has not been able to produce a Restatement. In the area of criminal law, for example, the ALI formulated the Model Penal Code, intended to guide legislators on what statutes they should enact as law. Impact The Restatements