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Series

2009

University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

Business Organizations Law

Federal Reserve

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

Bankruptcy Or Bailouts?, Kenneth M. Ayotte, David A. Skeel Jr. Mar 2009

Bankruptcy Or Bailouts?, Kenneth M. Ayotte, David A. Skeel Jr.

All Faculty Scholarship

The usual reaction if one mentions bankruptcy as a mechanism for addressing a financial institution’s default is incredulity. Those who favor the rescue of troubled financial institutions, and even those who prefer that their assets be promptly sold to a healthier institution, treat bankruptcy as anathema. Everyone seems to agree that nothing good can come from bankruptcy. Indeed, the Chapter 11 filing by Lehman Brothers has been singled out by many the primary cause of the severe economic and financial contraction that followed, and proof that bankruptcy is disorderly and ineffective. As a result, ad-hoc rescue lending to avoid bankruptcy …


How To Prevent Hard Cases From Making Bad Law: Bear Stearns, Delaware And The Strategic Use Of Comity, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock Jan 2009

How To Prevent Hard Cases From Making Bad Law: Bear Stearns, Delaware And The Strategic Use Of Comity, Marcel Kahan, Edward B. Rock

All Faculty Scholarship

The Bear Stearns/JP Morgan Chase merger placed Delaware between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the deal’s unprecedented deal protection measures – especially the 39.5% share exchange agreement – were probably invalid under current Delaware doctrine because they rendered the Bear Stearns shareholders’ approval rights entirely illusory. On the other hand, if a Delaware court were to enjoin a deal pushed by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury and arguably necessary to prevent a collapse of the international financial system, it would invite just the sort of federal intervention that would undermine Delaware’s role as the …


The Legal Origins Theory In Crisis, Lisa Fairfax Jan 2009

The Legal Origins Theory In Crisis, Lisa Fairfax

All Faculty Scholarship

The Legal Origins Theory purports to predict how countries respond to economic and social problems. Specifically, the legal origins of the United States should strongly influence the manner it approaches economic problems and its approach should be distinct from the response of civil law countries. If the theory is accurate, America's legal tradition should have a profound impact on its response to the crisis. This Article seeks to test the boundaries of the theory by assessing whether it could have predicted the manner the U.S. responded to the current economic crisis. After analyzing the U.S. response to the crisis, this …