This article draws upon data from a large empirical study of business bankruptcy cases to cast serious doubt upon two of the fundamental premises required to support claims that bankruptcy law should be replaced by default procedures established by contract. A number of proposals have been made...

The Business Bankruptcy Project is a five-year empirical study of about 3,200 business cases originally filed in Chapter 7, Chapter 11 and Chapter 13 in 23 judicial districts during 1994. This first report focuses on financial and demographic data, creating a statistical profile of the...

Although Chapter 11 has served as a model for bankruptcy reform around the world, the conventional wisdom has been that it is characterized by a relatively low success rate and endless delay. The data from large samples of Chapter 11 cases filed in 1994 and 2002 demonstrate that this...

This Article is a response to Lynn Lopucki's treatment of multinational bankruptcy proceedings in his book Courting Failure: How Competition for Big Cases Is Corrupting the Bankruptcy Courts. Professor Lopucki argues for a modified form of territorialism, whereby national courts cooperate to the...

Empirical research in bankruptcy has expanded rapidly in the past twenty years. The increase in scholars interested in the subject, the ease of obtaining relevant data from court files, and new technological developments have contributed to this expansion.However, the expansion of this research...

An increasing number of multinational insolvencies has created a need for coordination among national courts. The idea of 'modified universalism' has gathered broad support as an approach to that coordination. That approach requires identification of one jurisdiction as the site of the 'main'...

In 2001, 1.458 million American families filed for bankruptcy. To investigate medical contributors to bankruptcy we surveyed 1771 personal bankruptcy filers in five Federal courts, and subsequently completed in-depth interviews with 931 of them. About half of debtors cited medical causes,...

The corporation's core objective is to further the interests of shareholders. But one judicially crafted exception has long existed. In many jurisdictions around the world, financial distress mandates a shift to a duty to creditors. In May 2007, the Delaware Supreme Court announced a modern law...

International insolvency proceedings uniquely require coordination among a number of national courts to preserve the value of multinational corporations that have become financially distressed. The Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency provides a structure for recognition of foreign insolvency...

As Ian Fletcher put it in his outstanding treatise on international insolvency: “The increased awareness in recent times of the negative consequences of [the] international fragmentation of policy and approach to cross-border insolvency issues has fueled the quest for improved solutions.” No...