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The Restatement (Second) of Trusti, the most authoritative exposition of American trust law, exemplifies our tradition of thinking about the trust exclusively as a branch of the law of gratuitous transfers.Austin W. Scott, the reporter, excluded commercial trusts from the Restatement on the ground that "many of the rules" of trust law are inapplicable in commercial settings. 5 Scott offered no support for that claim, 6 which is mistaken.The familiar standards of trust fiduciary law protect trust beneficiaries of all sorts, regardless of whether the trust implements a gift or a business deal (unless, of course, the terms of the transaction expressly contraindicate).Indeed, one of the great attractions of the trust for the transaction planner who is designing a business deal is the convenience of being able to absorb these standards into the ground rules for the deal, merely by invoking the trust label.Scott carried his disdain for commercial trusts into his treatise, refusing to speak of them.' George G. Bogert, the other leading American treatise writer on trusts, was more tolerant; his book supplies introductory (although now quite antiquated) coverage of some types of commercial trust.'My theme in this Essay is that the American legal intellectual tradition, which characterizes the trust as a branch of the law of gratuitous transfers, is at odds with the reality of American trust practice.In truth, most of the wealth that is held in trust in the United States is placed there incident to business deals, and not in connection with gratuitous transfers.It will be seen that well over 90% of the money held in trust in the United States is in commercial trusts as opposed to personal trusts.In Part I of this Essay I undertake to identify and categorize the principal types of commercial trust that are currently employed in the United States.Part II points to the attributes of the trust that make it attractive as an instrument of commerce.Part III offers some thoughts about the puzzling neglect of the commercial trust in our juristic tradition-why, that is, we so resolutely conceive of the trust as a mode of gift, even while we employ it ever more as an instrument of commerce. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF TRUSTS § 1 cmt. b (1959).The full text of the passage reads: A statement of the rules of law relating to the employment of a trust as a device for carrying on business is not within the scope of the Restatement of this Subject.Although many of the rules applicable to trusts are applied to business trusts, yet many of the rules are not applied, and there are other rules which are applicable only to business trusts.The business trust is a special kind of business association and can best be dealt with in connection with other business associations.Id.6. Neither the text of the Restatement's official comment, nor the reporter's note, supplies any authority for Scott's claim that "many of the rules" of trust law do not apply to business uses of the trust.7.