Bankruptcy Law Commons^™

Condemning A Residential Mortgage Loan: Is It An Extraterritorial Taking?, Michael M. Sandez

American University Business Law Review

No abstract provided.

When Faith Falls Short: Bankruptcy Decisions Of Churches, Pamela Foohey

Articles by Maurer Faculty

What does a church do when it is about to go bust? Religious organizations, like any business, can experience financial distress. Leaders could try to solve their churches’ financial problems on their own. Perhaps leaders do not view the problems as addressable with law. Or perhaps they do not think, as a moral or spiritual matter, that they should resort to the legal system, such as bankruptcy, to deal with their churches’ inability to pay its debts. Yet about ninety religious organizations seek to reorganize under the Bankruptcy Code every year. This Article relies on interviews with forty-five of these …

Motions To Withdraw The Reference - An Empirical Study, Laura B. Bartell

Law Faculty Research Publications

No abstract provided.

The Value Of Soft Variables In Corporate Reorganizations, Michelle M. Harner

Faculty Scholarship

When a company is worth more as a going concern than on a liquidation basis, what creates that additional value? Is it the people, management decisions, the simple synergies of the operating business, or some combination of these types of soft variables? And perhaps more importantly, who owns or has an interest in these soft variables? This article explores these questions under existing legal doctrine and practice norms. Specifically, it discusses the characterization of soft variables under applicable law and in financing documents, and it surveys related judicial decisions. It also considers the overarching public policy and Constitutional implications of …

Consent: Its Scope, Blips, Blemishes, And A Bekins Extrapolation Too Far (Keynote Address), Hon. Thomas B. Bennett

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Positive Liberty In Public Finance: State Oversight Of Local-Government Debt And The North Carolina Model, Adam C. Parker

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Traditionalist's Take On Bankruptcy Intersections, Stephanie Ben-Ishai

Articles & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

When Faith Falls Short: Bankruptcy Decisions Of Churches, Pamela Foohey

Scholarly Works

What does a church do when it is about to go bust? Religious organizations, like any business, can experience financial distress. Leaders could try to solve their churches’ financial problems on their own. Perhaps leaders do not view the problems as addressable with law. Or perhaps they do not think, as a moral or spiritual matter, that they should resort to the legal system, such as bankruptcy, to deal with their churches’ inability to pay its debts. Yet about ninety religious organizations seek to reorganize under the Bankruptcy Code every year. This Article relies on interviews with forty-five of these …

The Least “Constructive” Provisions?: Analyzing The Bankruptcy Code’S Codified Canons, Asher Hawkins

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

What Are The Article Iii Limits To Bankruptcy Court Jurisdiction, And Can Parties Consent To Expanded Jurisdiction: Wellness International Network V. Sharif (13-935), Marshall E. Tracht

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Bankruptcy And Education, Keith Sharfman

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

Bankruptcy law interacts with education law in a number of respects. A bankrupt educational institution loses access to student financial aid, and its accreditation status is excluded from the bankruptcy estate. Actions by accreditation agencies against bankrupt educational institutions are not subject to the automatic stay. And absent a showing of undue hardship, student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

The exceptional treatment of educational institutions and their students in bankruptcy reflects a fundamental tension between the goals of bankruptcy law on the one hand and education policy on the other. While bankruptcy law generally seeks to maximize value …

Opening Remarks, Robert Schapiro

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

Dean Robert Schapiro's remarks honoring Marjorie Girth at the annual Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal Banquet. Dean Schapiro highlighted Emory's bankruptcy program, the Twelfth Annual Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal Symposium held in February, and Marjorie Girth's leadership and achievements in bankruptcy law.

Consumer Bankruptcy Panel: Undue Hardship: An Analysis Of Student Loan Debt Discharge In Bankruptcy, C. Ray Mullins, Dalié Jiménez, Rafael Pardo, Elaine Poon

Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal

The Consumer Panel focused on student loan debt, featuring judicial, academic, and practical insights and a call to action to help consumers.

Labor Activism In Bankruptcy, Andrew B. Dawson

Articles

This article analyzes the role of labor unions in corporate reorganizations and argues that labor union participation can improve corporate governance in the bankruptcy context. Generally, when a unionized corporation seeks to reorganize in bankruptcy, it does so with an eye towards obtaining concessions from its labor unions. The Bankruptcy Code permits corporate debtors to reject their collective bargaining agreements and to impose reduced wages and benefits, thus placing labor unions in a position of bargaining over concessions in bankruptcy. Such concession bargaining is vitally important to the labor union and to the debtor's reorganization efforts; however, the focus on …

Recognition And Enforcement In Cross-Border Insolvency Law: A Proposal For Judicial Gap-Filling, Professor Sandeep Gopalan, Michael Guihot

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

The globalization of business activity necessarily entails contacts with a diverse array of national laws and legal systems, and insolvencies in this context often have transnational consequences. In such situations, there is a clash of competing national laws on weighty questions including the recognition of security interests, processes related to the disbursal of assets, and different policy preferences underlying the protection of different kinds of creditors. These clashes pose difficulties because each country has framed its insolvency laws in response to particular political exigencies and the policy preferences of its citizens, reflecting different bargains between creditor and debtor protection. Despite …

Implementing Symmetric Treatment Of Financial Contracts In Bankruptcy And Bank Resolution, E. J. Janger, John A.E. Pottow

Articles

Financial contracts come in many forms and serve many functions in both the financial system and the broader economy. Repos secured by U.S. Treasury securities act as money substitutes and can play an important role as part of the money supply, while similarly structured repos, secured by more volatile collateral, may be used as speculative devices or hedges. Swaps can be used to insure against various types of market risk, from interest rates to oil prices, or they can operate as vehicles for highly leveraged investments. The parties to these instruments are sometimes major financial institutions and, other times, ordinary …

Liquidity, Systemic Risk, And The Bankruptcy Treatment Of Financial Contracts, Rizwaan J. Mokal

Brooklyn Journal of Corporate, Financial & Commercial Law

No abstract provided.

Leverage, Default, And Mortality: Evidence From Cancer Diagnoses, Arpit Gupta, Edward R. Morrison, Catherine Fedorenko, Scott Ramsey

Faculty Scholarship

This paper tests whether housing wealth mitigates the effects of health shocks on financial stress and mortality. We link cancer records to mortgage, bankruptcy, foreclosure, and credit report data. We find that cancer diagnoses are financially destabilizing even for households with health insurance, but the effect is driven by households without home equity. Households with equity extract it (by refinancing a mortgage or taking out a second). They are also more likely to accept recommended therapies and have higher post-diagnosis survival rates. Our findings show that housing wealth plays an important role in understanding how individuals buffer idiosyncratic shocks.

Secured Credit In Religious Institutions' Reorganizations, Pamela Foohey

Scholarly Works

Scholars increasingly assume that most businesses enter Chapter 11 with a high percentage of secured debt, which leads to a high percentage of cases ending in the sale of the debtor’s assets under section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code rather than with confirmation of a reorganization plan. However, evidence and discussions about “the end of bankruptcy” center on secured creditors’ role in the reorganizations of very large corporations. The few analyses of cross-sections of Chapter 11 proceedings suggest that secured creditor control is not nearly as omnipresent as asserted and that 363 sales are not as dominant as assumed.

This …

Grassroots Shareholder Activism In Large Commercial Bankruptcies, Diane Lourdes Dick

Faculty Articles

In early 2013, a group of similarly situated individuals gathered to discuss how they could defend themselves against a grave potential injustice. Time was of the essence, so they would need to act quickly to preserve their rights. Fortunately, their path to justice was already paved: the matter was pending in federal court, and each had standing to appear and be heard. But frustratingly, this seemingly well-paved path was barred to them. These individuals, who were technically parties to the proceeding, were virtually invisible to the court and largely disenfranchised in settlement negotiations. Striving to overcome these obstacles, they persisted …