In this Q&A, Bartholomew reflects on the organization’s role in advancing the law, and the work she is contributing as a member. She also reflects on her current research and scholarship, including emerging legal issues surrounding artificial intelligence, the focus of her first ALI project.

For readers who may be unfamiliar with the organization, what role does the American Law Institute play in shaping and improving the law, and why is its work so important?

Law is often murky and evolving. The profession needs resources built by people who have already tested the hard questions. The ALI's mission is to clarify and modernize American law. It generates three instruments: Restatements, which distill the common law for judges; Model Codes, like the Uniform Commercial Code, which give legislatures a tested framework to adopt; and Principles, which recommend best practices to legislatures and agencies. Courts and legislatures rely on all three, as does legal education. That reliance carries real stakes: without it, the same legal question could yield different answers in different courtrooms, with no shared authority to reconcile them.

ALI brings together leading judges, lawyers and legal scholars from across the country. What do you hope to gain from your collaborations with fellow ALI members, and what do you hope to contribute in return?

Too often, practice and academia stand siloed, speaking past each other. My scholarship has always tried to close that gap. Before academia, I litigated antitrust class actions. That experience still shapes my research and teaching today. The ALI performs the same bridging function institutionally: judges, practitioners, and scholars, working in the same room, test doctrine against courtroom reality. That is the rigor I want from this collaboration: colleagues who will debate whether a rule that reads well on paper actually survives contact with a courtroom. In return, I hope to offer a voice that bridges the two: someone who has practiced, not just written about it.

You have said that your first ALI projects focus on civil liability, artificial intelligence and civil adjudication. Can you tell us about these projects and why they are particularly important right now?

My first two ALI projects align with my fields of expertise: Civil Liability for Artificial Intelligence, and High-Volume Civil Adjudication. One asks whether the law needs to change; the other asks whether existing law can hold under new pressure. Both respond to challenges courts are facing right now. Courts are already issuing AI liability rulings without a shared framework, leaving the basic question unresolved: can existing tort doctrine stretch to cover AI, or does the technology demand something new? High-Volume Civil Adjudication poses a different problem. Long-standing procedural rules are straining under increasingly restrictive interpretations. Claims once resolved through class actions can no longer aggregate that way. But those cases do not disappear.  Rather, they migrate to individual filings and other adjudicatory channels never built to absorb it.  Offering solutions to these challenges is critical for the legal profession.

In addition to your scholarship, you serve as vice dean for student achievement and co-director of the Advocacy Institute at the law school. As someone whose work has had an impact both in the classroom and in the legal academy, what continues to inspire and motivate your teaching and research?

My scholarship explores facets of antitrust, civil procedure, evidence, and canon law. To many, this lineup might seem like the least glamorous backstage crew in the building. Perhaps for some that’s true.  But I believe procedure and evidence do not get the attention they deserve. They serve the underlying machinery of the legal system, deciding what a jury is allowed to hear or whether a plaintiff ever gets past a motion to dismiss. Even after twenty years in academia, I am still fascinated by the litigation’s inner workings. Teaching lets me share that fascination. And nothing is more invigorating than the moment students realize the background characters of law—the evidentiary and procedural rules—play far larger roles than they first imagined.