Abstract:
This paper discusses the possible meaning and effect of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Stern v. Marshall, in which the Court held that the bankruptcy courts' statutory authority to enter final judgments on certain counterclaims against creditors violates Article III of the Constitution. It was prepared by the authors as a report to the fall 2011 annual meeting of the National Bankruptcy Conference.
The Stern decision is enigmatic.
Starting from the case of Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land & Improvement Co., 59 U.S. (18 How.) 272 (1855), this article looks at the roots of the recent decision in Stern v. Marshall, 131 S. Ct. 2594 (2011). In Murray’s Lessee, the U.S.
This article provides a detailed examination of the structure, sources, and ultimate content of the Islamic law of distressed debt. With specific illustrations from the Qur'an, sunna, and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), it orients non-specialists on the path to understanding where Islamic law comes from, how it is structured, and what its most salient provisions say about the proper treatment of insolvent debtors.
Summary and Commentary:
Starting by painting a vivid tableau of a §341 Meeting of Creditors, its atmosphere is aptly compared with the anxiety of an emergency room. The metaphor gets pushed too far, with the Trustee being likened to a doctor diagnosing people "with a financial emergency- bankruptcy." This would be a fully congruent comparison only if, and I hesitate to extend this metaphor, because most Trustees are truly good and caring people, who keep a debtor’s interest in mind, if not at heart, a medical doctor was charged by his Hippocratic Oath
Abstract:
When enacted in 1978, the Bankruptcy Code was heralded as a consumer protection victory. It gave families in financial trouble a complex array of legal options, including the ability to repay their debts over a number of years in chapter 13 bankruptcy. That new option was lauded by experts and became popular across the nation.
Outside of bankruptcy, the right of a secured creditor to "credit bid" allows the secured creditor to compete with cash bids in foreclosure to assure that the secured creditor’s collateral is not sold for less than the secured creditor thinks it is worth.
This Essay, which was written for a Law and Contemporary Problems symposium on Stanley Hauerwas, tries to develop an account of public engagement in Hauerwas’ theology. The Essay distinguishes between two kinds of public engagement, "prophetic" and "participatory." Christian engagement is prophetic when it criticizes or condemns the state, often by urging the state to honor or alter its true principles.
On April 20, 2005, President Bush signed into law the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (BAPCPA). BAPCPA was hailed by some as a sensible overhaul of the bankruptcy code aimed towards decreasing repeat bankruptcy filing rates. In this article, the authors consider specific changes that BAPCPA made to the Bankruptcy Code. Some of these changes were specifically targeted at the congressional view that repeat bankruptcy filings are largely the result of strategic and irresponsible behavior.
