WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Progress & Freedom Foundation is a high-tech think tank that does more than think about public policy, law and economics. In the legal area, its fellows literally lead the profession. Raymond L. Gifford, the Foundation’s president, was elected to the prestigious American Law Institute, an organization that reviews laws and suggests reforms and clarifications. Randolph J. May, a Foundation senior fellow and director of Communications Policy Studies, in August becomes chair-elect of the American Bar Association’s Section on Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice. May assumes the section’s chairmanship in August 2004.

The American Law Institute, which consists of a select group of judges, lawyers and law professors, reviews state and federal laws and suggests legal reforms “to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific work.” Its model codes, studies and legal restatements are ubiquitous legal references. The organization was founded in 1923 by the likes of Chief Justices William Howard Taft and Charles Evans Hughes. Early leaders included Secretary of State Elihu Root and Justices Benjamin Cardoza and Learned Hand.

The ABA is the largest voluntary professional organization in the world, accrediting law schools, promoting legal education, assisting judges and lawyers and pursuing other initiatives to improve the profession. The administrative and regulatory panel May helps lead deals with areas of the law relevant to his studies at The Foundation.

“The policy, regulatory and legal communities are particularly intertwined in Washington,” said Gifford. “That is a necessary and healthy circumstance of our form of government. To the extent we reform and clarify laws and regulatory processes through our positions with the ALI and the ABA, we are moving the Foundation’s agenda forward, as well. Our studies and our work with these two national organizations are related.”

The Progress & Freedom Foundation, which celebrated its 10th anniversary on April 10, is a market-oriented think tank that studies the impact of the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.