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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Rethinking Antebellum Bankruptcy, Rafael I. Pardo
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 Although Congress repealed the 1841 Act in 1843, the legislation lasted significantly longer than recognized by scholars.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 …
Racialized Bankruptcy Federalism, Rafael I. Pardo
Racialized Bankruptcy Federalism, Rafael I. Pardo
Scholarship@WashULaw
Notwithstanding the robust national power conferred by the U.S. Constitution’s Bankruptcy Clause, the design and administration of federal bankruptcy law entails choices about the extent to which non-bankruptcy-law entitlements will remain un-displaced. When such entitlements sound in domestic nonfederal law (i.e., state or local law), displacing them triggers federalism concerns. Considerations regarding the relationship between the federal government and the nation’s smaller political subdivisions might warrant preserving nonfederal-law entitlements even though their displacement would be authorized pursuant to the bankruptcy power. But such considerations might also suggest replacing those entitlements with bankruptcy-specific ones. Some scholarship has theorized about the principles …