Law Commons^™

Proprietary Relief Without Rescission, Hang Wu Tang

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The decision of the Court of Appeal in Halley v. The Law Society [2003] EWCA Civ 97 has the potential to muddy the waters of the law of rescission. It is a fundamental principle that a fraudulent misrepresentation renders a contract voidable at the instance of the representee (Bristol and West Building Society v. Mothew [1998] Ch. 1, 22). Modern authorities suggest that the representee does not have any proprietary interest in property transferred by him pursuant to the contract before rescission (see Bristol and West Building Society v. Mothew [1998] Ch. 1, 22-23; Twinsectra Ltd. v. Yardley [1999] Lloyd's …

The Unfortunate Life And Merciful Death Of The Avoidance Powers Under Section 103 Of The Durbin-Delahunt Bill: What Were They Thinking?, (With C. Mooney, Jr.)., Steven L. Harris

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Innovative German Approach To Consumer Debt Relief: Revolutionary Changes In German Law, And Surprising Lessons For The United States, 24 Nw. J. Int'l L. & Bus. 257 (2004), Jason Kilborn

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Bankruptcy Code At Twenty-Five And The Next Generation Of Lawmaking, Melissa B. Jacoby

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Self-Organizing Legal Systems: Precedent And Variation In Bankruptcy, Bernard Trujillo

Law Faculty Publications

Models of legal ordering are frequently hierarchical. These models do not explain two prominent realities: (1) variation in the content of a legal system, and (2) patterns of non-hierarchical ordering that we observe. As a supplement to hierarchical explanations of legal order, this Article, drawing from physical and social science research on complex systems, offers a self-organizing model. The self-organizing model focuses on variation in the content of legal systems and attempts to explain the relationship between that variation and patterns of ordering. The self-organizing model demonstrates that variation and ordering are not opposite categories, but rather constitute one continuous …

Running Backs, Wolves, And Other Fatalities: How Manipulations Of Coherence In Legal Opinions Marginalize Violent Death, Jonathan Yovel

Jonathan Yovel

By examining legal cases that involve violent death and its marginalization by the courts, this essay looks into the relations between narrative coherence and narrative absurd in judicial opinions. Coherence, rather than a static, unequivocal characteristic of legal narratives, is studied here as a highly manipulable narrative and rhetorical performance. Giving a performative twist to reader-response approaches I do not really ask what is the meaning of this text (as construed by its reading)? but rather, working from the position of the text's discursive community, what does this text do? The reading of these cases explores how judicial narration and …

Of Predatory Lending And The Democratization Of Credit: Preserving The Social Safety Net Of Informality In Small-Loan Transactions, Regina Austin

American University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy And Mortgage Lending: The Homeowner Dilemma, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 19 (2004), A. Mechele Dickerson

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

203 N. Lasalle Five Years Later: Answers To The Open Questions, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 61 (2004), Paul B. Lewis

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Creditors' Rights Risk: A Title Insurer's Perspective, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 223 (2004), Paul L. Hammann, John C. Murray

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Sovereign Debt Reform And The Best Interest Of Creditors, William W. Bratton, G. Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

In April 2002 the International Monetary Fund introduced a sovereign bankruptcy proposal only to be rebuffed by the United States Treasury. Where the IMF wanted a mandatory bankruptcy regime, the Treasury wanted to solve distress problems with contractual devices. Sovereign bondholders and sovereign issuers themselves flatly rejected both proposals, even though they were nominally the beneficiaries of both proponents. This Article addresses and explains this bondholder reaction. In so doing, it takes a highly skeptical view of the IMF's proposal even as it shows that the incentive structure surrounding sovereign lending renders untenable the Treasury's contractarian proposal. The Article's analysis …

2003 - A Year Of Discovery: Cybergenics And Plain Meaning In Bankruptcy Cases, Marjorie O. Rendell

Villanova Law Review

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy's Home Economics, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This essay began its life as a commentary on Elizabeth Warren’s article “The New Economics of the American Family” at the American Bankruptcy Institute's 25th Anniversary Symposium of the Bankruptcy Code in 2003. (Both the Warren article and my commentary were published in the symposium in the American Bankruptcy Institute Law Review.) “The New Economics of the American Family” was drawn in many respects from then-Professor Warren’s co-authored book, The Two Income Trap. The essay refers to both, though it puts particular emphasis on the article. The essay begins by briefly describing the basic thesis of the article-- …

Remembering Pine Gate, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 5 (2004), Douglas G. Baird

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Treatment Of Real Property Liens In Bankruptcy Cases, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 171 (2004), Gerald F. Munitz

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Recent Developments In Bankruptcy Law, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

Discussion of 2004 cases regarding bankruptcy law.

Death And Resurrection Of Secured Credit, James J. White

Articles

The Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 (the Code) posed palpable threats to secured creditors. It was drafted by a commission that was at least as concerned with the rights of debtors as with the rights of creditors. It was modified and adopted by a Congress that might have been the most liberal since World War II and signed into law by President Carter at the apogee of the left's power, two years before the Reagan election that marked the rise of the right and the beginning of the left's decline. The power of the left was exerted most forcefully on …

Inside The Black Box: How Should A Sovereign Bankruptcy Regime Be Structured?, Patrick Bolton, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bankrupting Trademarks, Xuan-Thao Nguyen

Articles

The explosive growth of technology in the last two decades has vastly expanded intellectual property jurisprudence and elevated intellectual property to a heightened status in the marketplace. Indeed, a company's intellectual property assets may now be its most valuable corporate assets. Moreover, the property value of some trademarks is significantly greater than that of the trademark owner's physical assets.

The term “intellectual property” is commonly understood to include patents, trade secrets, copyrights, and trademarks. Yet a paradigm has been constructed and enforced over the last fifteen years wherein only patents, trade secrets, and copyrights are included. The paradigm specifically excludes …

Precision In Statutory Drafting: The Qualitech Quagmire And The Sad History Of § 365(H) Of The Bankruptcy Code, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 97 (2004), Robert M. Zinman

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Non-Procrustean Bankruptcy, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

Many advocates of bankruptcy reform bristle at aspects of the bankruptcy system they find distributively "unfair." These scholars point to the instances in which wealthy debtors have been able to retain million-dollar homes and luxury items, examples which at first glance might offend any reasonable sense of decency or fairness. Yet if bankruptcy provides insurance otherwise unavailable because of market failures, then an ideal bankruptcy system would embrace much of this inequality in post-bankruptcy standards of living. The wealthy generally choose private contracts that ensure their high standards of living. Though others envy these benefits, they do not wish to …

The Political Economy Of Property Exemption Laws, Richard M. Hynes, Anup Malani, Eric A. Posner

Faculty Publications

Exemption laws enable people who default on loans to protect certain assets from liquidation. Every state has its own set of exemption laws, and they vary widely. The 1978 federal bankruptcy law contains a set of national exemptions, which debtors in bankruptcy are permitted to use instead of their state's exemptions unless the state has formally "opted out" of the federal system. We contend that states' decisions to opt out shed light on their exemption levels. We find that states are more likely to opt out if their state exemption is lower than the federal exemption and that states are …

Overoptimism And Overborrowing, Richard M. Hynes

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Innovative German Approach To Consumer Debt Relief: Revolutionary Changes In German Law, And Surprising Lessons For The United States, Jason J. Kilborn

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This Article seeks to achieve two goals as it describes the consumer provisions of the new German Insolvency Act. First, it reveals critical distinctions between the theory of consumer insolvency, as described in German law and legal literature, and the reality of consumer insolvency in practice, as it has developed in the four-and-a-half years since the law went into effect. From both theoretical and practical perspectives, the German experience both supports and challenges many of the notions underlying consumer bankruptcy reform debates in the United States. As it turns out, the German and U.S. consumer debt relief systems produce largely …

Sovereign Debt Reform And The Best Interest Of Creditors, William W. Bratton, G. Mitu Gulati

Vanderbilt Law Review

This Article is about boilerplate language located at the back of contracts drafted by the world's largest law firms. The clauses in question are process provisions that regulate the amendment of sovereign debt contracts. These paragraphs have been drafted and redrafted by generations of corporate lawyers, yet they have changed little in their broad outlines in more than a century of use. Now they take center stage in the global financial arena, where they govern billions of dollars (and pounds, euros, and yen) of sovereign debt in default and billions more in imminent risk of default. Officials, academics, and even …

Racial Dimensions Of Credit And Bankruptcy, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Past, Present And Future Of Debtor-In-Possession Financing, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

Chapter 11's distinctive post-petition financing rules trace their ancestry back to the origins of large scale corporate reorganization in America in the nineteenth century. In this sense, post-petition financing has always been with us. But in the past decade, the role of the financers has changed. After a century in the shadows, post-petition lenders have stepped onto center stage. The DIP loan agreement has become the single most important governance lever in many large Chapter 11 cases. Why have these formerly bashful financers suddenly started hogging the spotlight? I argue in this article that the generous terms offered to DIP …

Corporate Anatomy Lessons, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

The book that will lay the groundwork for the corporate law debates of the coming decade is The Anatomy of Corporate Law. Written by seven of the world's leading corporate law scholars - Henry Hansmann, Reinier Kraakman and Ed Rock of the U.S.; Paul Davies of England; Gerard Hertig of Switzerland; Klaus Hopt of Germany; and Hideki Kanda of Japan - The Anatomy of Corporate Law attempts to identify the underlying structure of corporate law, and to provide a framework for understanding the wide range of approaches that different countries take to corporate law regulation. It is hard to overstate …

Employees, Pensions, And Governance In Chapter 11, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Unfortunate Life And Merciful Death Of The Avoidance Powers Under Section 103 Of The Durbin-Delahunt Bill: What Were They Thinking?, Steven L. Harris, Charles W. Mooney Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.