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Groping And Coping In The Shadow Of Murphy's Law: Bankruptcy Theory And The Elementary Economics Of Failure, James W. Bowers

Michigan Law Review

Part I briefly examines the conventional explanation for bankruptcy's defining characteristic, its default distributional rule. It concludes that the conventional explanation is insufficiently informative for us to tell whether the Bankruptcy Code (Code) is actually working or not. Part II argues that the only existing systematic attempt to explain bankruptcy law, the so-called "Creditors' Bargain" Theory, is inadequate for two reasons. First, the predictions it generates are belied by real-world events. Second, it is mistaken on theoretical grounds, primarily because it ignores how debtors are likely to manage their assets. Part III presents the Murphian theory of failing behavior, the …