To view or access the 2019 supplement, click here. Bankruptcy Law: Principles, Policies, and Practice puts bankruptcy law in context, illuminating the evolution of the Bankruptcy Code with an exploration of current and historical non-bankruptcy remedies. The book continually approaches each topic through the goals of creditors and debtors, exploring how each is served in various parts of the Code. Extensive questions and numerous problems focus student attention on the mechanics of the bankruptcy process. But they do so through the lens of history and policy, and they explain why the law is the way it is. The authors' aim in designing the casebook was to provide a very accessible medium for introducing students to bankruptcy law in a sophisticated manner. As the title indicates, the emphasis is on the relationship between the core principles essential to an understanding of the law, the policies animating those principles, and the challenges presented by the effectuation of those principles and policies in bankruptcy practice. In its methodology, Bankruptcy Law: Principles, Policies, and Practice relies on a variety of expository tools--textual discussion, comprehension questions, problems, cases and thought / discussion questions--all with a careful eye toward building upon previous materials and concepts. Economy of presentation is the hallmark of the casebook, but the Teacher's Manual picks up where the casebook leaves off. The Teacher's Manual is consciously drafted (in both organization and voice) as a set of detailed teaching notes. This book also is available in a three-hole punched, alternative loose-leaf version printed on 8.5 x 11 inch paper with wider margins and with the same pagination as the hardbound book. PowerPoint slides are available upon adoption of this book. Download sample slides from the full 38-chapter presentation here. If you have adopted the book for a course, contact [email protected] to request the PowerPoint slides.

A careful analysis of the fundamentals of bankruptcy law.

Bankruptcy in America, in stark contrast to its status in most other countries, typically signifies not a debtor's last gasp but an opportunity to catch one's breath and recoup. Why has the nation's legal system evolved to allow both corporate and individual debtors greater control over their fate than imaginable elsewhere? Masterfully probing the political dynamics behind this question, David Skeel here provides the first complete account of the remarkable journey American bankruptcy law has taken from its beginnings in 1800, when Congress lifted the country's first bankruptcy code right out of English law, to the present day. Skeel shows that the confluence of three forces that emerged over many years--an organized creditor lobby, pro-debtor ideological currents, and an increasingly powerful bankruptcy bar--explains the distinctive contours of American bankruptcy law. Their interplay, he argues in clear, inviting prose, has seen efforts to legislate bankruptcy become a compelling battle royale between bankers and lawyers--one in which the bankers recently seem to have gained the upper hand. Skeel demonstrates, for example, that a fiercely divided bankruptcy commission and the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress have yielded the recent, ideologically charged battles over consumer bankruptcy. The uniqueness of American bankruptcy has often been noted, but it has never been explained. As different as twenty-first century America is from the horse-and-buggy era origins of our bankruptcy laws, Skeel shows that the same political factors continue to shape our unique response to financial distress.

"[This book provides an] analysis and discussion of every aspect of bankruptcy law, including an overview of bankruptcy; invoking bankruptcy relief (with a very detailed explanation of the means test); the automatic stay; jurisdiction and procedure; property of the estate; trustee's avoiding powers; payment of claims; executory contracts and unexpired leases; exemptions; discharge; reorganization under Chapter 11; debt adjustments under Chapter 13; debt adjustments under Chapter 12; and cross-border cases under chapter 15. The 2005 BAPCPA amendments and the extensive case law thereunder are explained and critiqued. All relevant Supreme Court cases through the 2015 Term are discussed in depth, including, for example, Stern, Wellness, Arkison, Caulkett, Schwab, Ransom, Lanning, Baker Botts, and many more."--

Bankruptcy in America is a booming business, with hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans filing for bankruptcy each year. Is this dramatic growth a result of mushrooming debt or does it reflect a moral decline that permits the middle class to evade their debts? As We Forgive Our Debtors addresses these questions with hard empirical data drawn from bankruptcy court filings. The authors of this multidisciplinary study describe the law and the statistics in clear, nontechnical language, combining a thorough statistical description of the social and economic position of consumer bankrupts with human portraits of the debtors and creditors whose journeys have ended in bankruptcy court. Book jacket.

Through the lens of the Asian Financial Crisis, this book documents how international organizations and national governments crafted legal responses, through corporate bankruptcy reforms, to the fragility of financial markets in East Asia and worldwide.