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Commentary On “On The Nature Of Bankruptcy”: Bankruptcy And Bargaining, Theodore Eisenberg

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

At a conference on bargaining, it should not be surprising that there is more than one perspective on the relationship between bankruptcy and bargaining. Dean Jackson and Professor Scott's article emphasizes a hypothetical bargain to be struck by idealized participants in a firm. It explores the relationship between bankruptcy and that bargain. By imagining what that bargain would look like, Jackson and Scott construct new justifications for bankruptcy law's distributional rules. Such a theory, however, is subject to reservations about the depth of insight that can be gained from examination of purely theoretical bargains. Stripped of real-world characteristics, hypothetical bargains …