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Full-Text Articles in Bankruptcy Law

Rethinking Antebellum Bankruptcy, Rafael I. Pardo Jan 2024

Rethinking Antebellum Bankruptcy, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

Bankruptcy law has been repeatedly reinvented over time in response to changing circumstances. The Bankruptcy Act of 1841—passed by Congress to address the financial ruin caused by the Panic of 1837—constituted a revolutionary break from its immediate predecessor, the Bankruptcy Act of 1800, which was the nation’s first bankruptcy statute. Although Congress repealed the 1841 Act in 1843, the legislation lasted significantly longer than recognized by scholars. The repeal legislation permitted pending bankruptcy cases to be finally resolved pursuant to the Act’s terms. Because debtors flooded the judicially understaffed 1841 Act system with over 46,000 cases, the Act’s administration continued …


Taking Stock Of Chapter 11, David A. Skeel Jr. May 2021

Taking Stock Of Chapter 11, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, written for a symposium honoring Sam Gerdano, I offer an assessment of current Chapter 11 theory and practice. The most distinctive feature of current Chapter 11 practice is the extent to which the parties now enter into intercreditor agreements, restructuring support agreements and other actual contracts governing their rights and responsibilities. One question raised by the dramatic shift in bankruptcy practice is whether the leading normative theory of bankruptcy, the Creditors’ Bargain Theory, is now obsolete, as some scholars have suggested. The Creditors’ Bargain Theory explains bankruptcy as a solution to coordination problems that might lead to …


Stern Claims And Article Iii Adjudication - The Bankruptcy Judge Knows Best, Laura B. Bartell Jan 2019

Stern Claims And Article Iii Adjudication - The Bankruptcy Judge Knows Best, Laura B. Bartell

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.


The Critical Tax Project, Feminist Theory, And Rewriting Judicial Opinions, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford Jan 2019

The Critical Tax Project, Feminist Theory, And Rewriting Judicial Opinions, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

Articles

In this essay, the authors discuss the intellectual foundations for their co-edited book, Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions (2017), the first in a series of subject-matter specific volumes published in the U.S. Feminist Judgments Series by Cambridge University Press. Using only the facts and precedents in existence at the time of the original opinion, the contributors to this and other feminist judgments projects around the globe seek to show how application of feminist perspectives could impact, or even change, the holding or reasoning of judicial decisions. Underlying Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Tax Opinions is the belief that the study of taxation …


Foreword: Bankruptcy’S New And Old Frontiers, William W. Bratton, David A. Skeel Jr. Jan 2018

Foreword: Bankruptcy’S New And Old Frontiers, William W. Bratton, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

This Symposium marks the fortieth anniversary of the enactment of the 1978 Bankruptcy Code (the “1978 Code” or the “Code”) with an extended look at seismic changes that currently are reshaping Chapter 11 reorganization. Today’s typical Chapter 11 case looks radically different than did the typical case in the Code’s early years. In those days, Chapter 11 afforded debtors a cozy haven. Most everything that mattered occurred within the context of the formal proceeding, where the debtor enjoyed agenda control, a leisurely timetable, and judicial solicitude. The safe haven steadily disappeared over time, displaced by a range of countervailing forces …


The Structural Exceptionalism Of Bankruptcy Administration, Rafael I. Pardo, Kathryn A. Watts Jan 2012

The Structural Exceptionalism Of Bankruptcy Administration, Rafael I. Pardo, Kathryn A. Watts

Scholarship@WashULaw

The current system of administration of the Bankruptcy Code is highly anomalous. It stands as one of the few major federal civil statutory regimes administered almost exclusively through adjudication in the courts, not through a federal regulatory agency. This means that rather than fitting bankruptcy into a regulatory model, Congress has chosen to give the courts primary interpretive authority in the field of bankruptcy, delegating to courts the power to engage in residual policymaking. Although scholars have noted some narrow aspects of the structural exceptionalism of bankruptcy administration, Congress’s decision to locate responsibility for bankruptcy policymaking almost exclusively with the …


Does Ideology Matter In Bankruptcy? Voting Behavior On The Courts Of Appeals, Rafael I. Pardo, Jonathan Remy Nash Jan 2012

Does Ideology Matter In Bankruptcy? Voting Behavior On The Courts Of Appeals, Rafael I. Pardo, Jonathan Remy Nash

Scholarship@WashULaw

This Article empirically examines the question of whether courts of appeals judges cast ideological votes in the context of bankruptcy. The empirical study is unique insofar as it is the first to specifically examine the voting behavior of circuit court judges in bankruptcy cases. More importantly, it focuses on a particular type of dispute that arises in bankruptcy - debt-dischargeability determinations. The study implements this focused approach in order to reduce heterogeneity in result. We find, contrary to our hypotheses, no evidence that circuit court judges engage in ideological voting in bankruptcy cases. We do find, however, non-ideological factors - …


(Almost) Everything We Learned About Pleasing Bankruptcy Judges, We Learned In Kindergarten, Nancy B. Rapoport, Roland Bernier Iii Jan 2008

(Almost) Everything We Learned About Pleasing Bankruptcy Judges, We Learned In Kindergarten, Nancy B. Rapoport, Roland Bernier Iii

Scholarly Works

In this essay, we demonstrate that most ethics violations (at least the ones that irritate bankruptcy judges) are also violations of simple rules of behavior that people should have learned in kindergarten.


Eliminating The Judicial Function In Consumer Bankruptcy, Rafael I. Pardo Jan 2007

Eliminating The Judicial Function In Consumer Bankruptcy, Rafael I. Pardo

Scholarship@WashULaw

The centerpiece of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 has been the means test, a formulaic statutory directive pursuant to which courts are to presume abuse of the bankruptcy system by Chapter 7 debtors who have an ability to repay past debts with future income. This Essay provides a new insight into means testing by arguing that, more than anything else, it has brought about a significant change in the institutional design of bankruptcy courts: namely, the increased blurring of administrative and judicial functions. The Essay concludes that this development should be cause for concern as …


Courting Failure, Lynn M. Lopucki Jan 2006

Courting Failure, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

Courting Failure is the story of a bad venue statute that led to rampant forum shopping by large public companies. This forum shopping induced competition among bankruptcy courts for the cases. That competition in turn caused the unnecessary failure of many of the reorganizing companies and corrupted the United States Bankruptcy Courts. Congress has not acted to fix the statute because of Delaware's parochial interest in preserving the status quo.


Where Do You Get Off? A Reply To Courting Failure'S Critics, Lynn M. Lopucki Jan 2006

Where Do You Get Off? A Reply To Courting Failure'S Critics, Lynn M. Lopucki

UF Law Faculty Publications

By historical accident, the bankruptcy venue statute gives large public companies their choice of bankruptcy courts. Over three decades a competition for those cases has developed among some United States Bankruptcy Courts. The most successful courts - Delaware and New York - today attract more than two thirds of the billion-dollar-and-over cases. The courts compete principally because the cases represent a multi-billion dollar a year industry in professional fees alone, because local lawyers pressure judges to compete, and because judges who lose the competition are stigmatized and may not be reappointed. In February 2005, the University of Michigan Press published …


Valuation Averaging: A New Procedure For Resolving Valuation Disputes, Keith Sharfman Dec 2003

Valuation Averaging: A New Procedure For Resolving Valuation Disputes, Keith Sharfman

Rutgers Law School (Newark) Faculty Papers

In this Article, Professor Sharfman addresses the problem of "discretionary valuation": that courts resolve valuation disputes arbitrarily and unpredictably, thus harming litigants and society. As a solution, he proposes the enactment of "valuation averaging," a new procedure for resolving valuation disputes modeled on the algorithmic valuation processes often agreed to by sophisticated private firms in advance of any dispute. He argues that by replacing the discretion of judges and juries with a mechanical valuation process, valuation averaging would cause litigants to introduce more plausible and conciliatory valuations into evidence and thereby reduce the cost of valuation litigation and increase the …


Embracing Descent: The Bankruptcy Of A Business Paradigm For Conceptualizing And Regulating The Legal Profession, Jeffrey W. Stempel Jan 1999

Embracing Descent: The Bankruptcy Of A Business Paradigm For Conceptualizing And Regulating The Legal Profession, Jeffrey W. Stempel

Scholarly Works

Lawyers are said to travel in packs, or at least pairs, and in the popular parlance are often compared to hoards of locusts, herds of cattle, or unruly mobs. However, at least for purposes of assessing concerns with professionalism currently surrounding the bar and the public, whether attorneys are more or less social than other human animals does not matter. My point is simply that lawyers are social beings; like other human beings in social and occupational groups, lawyers behave largely in accordance with group norms, in much the same way peer pressure led Julian English toward juvenile delinquency in …


Avoiding Judicial Wrath: The Ten Commandments For Bankruptcy Practitioners, Nancy B. Rapoport Jan 1996

Avoiding Judicial Wrath: The Ten Commandments For Bankruptcy Practitioners, Nancy B. Rapoport

Scholarly Works

This article describes the top ten duties for bankruptcy lawyers. 1. Know the purpose(s) of the Bankruptcy Code. 2. Know the facts and the law. 3. Spend time crafting your arguments. 4. Don't lie (about conflicts of interest or about controlling law). 5. Be respectful (of other lawyers, of the system, and of other participants in the system). 6. Don't indulge your client's sleazy instincts. 7. Don't escalate a conflict unnecessarily. 8. Honor your calendar. 9. Keep your client informed. 10. Don't whine.


Grammarians At The Gate: The Rehnquist Court's Evolving Plain Meaning Approach To Bankruptcy Jurisprudence, Walter Effross Jan 1993

Grammarians At The Gate: The Rehnquist Court's Evolving Plain Meaning Approach To Bankruptcy Jurisprudence, Walter Effross

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.