Law Commons^™

Shopping For Judges: An Empirical Analysis Of Venue Choice In Large Chapter 11 Reorganizations, Theodore Eisenberg, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

This Article reports the results of a comprehensive study of big-case bankruptcy forum shopping from 1980 to 1997. A description of what has occurred helps explain both the causes of Delaware's rise as the preferred Chapter 11 forum and why embarrassment forced the system to take extraordinary countermeasures. The temporal coincidence of three major changes in Chapter 11 practice obscures those causes: (1) a nationwide increase in the rate of Chapter 11 forum shopping; (2) a national trend toward faster case-processing times; and (3) the rise of "prepackaged" bankruptcy cases in which the necessary majorities of creditors have accepted the …