Using an empirical analysis from Chapter 7 cases in five judicial districts, this article estimates the direct costs in typical small business Chapter 7s. The article finds that direct costs are lower than commonly portrayed, constituting a mean of 6.1% of total assets of 13.5% of total...

In the symposium “Bankruptcy and Race: Is There a Relation?,” participants responded to our earlier article on race and bankruptcy chapter choice that appeared in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies. Our article found that African Americans were overrepresented in chapter 13 and found...

In “Race, Attorney Influence, and Bankruptcy Chapter Choice,” which appeared in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, we reported on two studies. The first study used real-world bankruptcy data and documented a large racial disparity in bankruptcy chapter choice. Even after controlling for...

Apologies result in better outcomes for wrongdoers in a variety of legal contexts. Previous research, however, has primarily addressed settings in which a clear victim receives the apology. This research examines the influence of apologies on a different kind of legal decision — the decision...

We report on racially disparate uses of chapter 13 bankruptcy. Currently, approximately 1,500,000 bankruptcy petitions are filed each year, with about 30% of those petitions being chapter 13 cases. Although chapter 13 can offer some legal advantages for persons seeking to protect valuable assets...

One in ten adult Americans have turned to the consumer bankruptcy system for help. For the past almost forty years, the only systematic data collection about the people who file bankruptcy comes from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP), for which we serve as co-principal investigators. In this...

This article analyzes the individual cases reviewed by the Supreme Court under the tutelage of Chief Justice William Rehnquist by homing in on some of the issues unique to each case and identifying recurring themes. These individual cases are then viewed in light of what they reveal about the...

This essay reviews the competing claims in the American Bankruptcy Law Journal's “Vanishing Trials” symposium. The essay concludes the contributions to the symposium are not as disparate as they might at first appear. One must distinguish between the level of contentiousness in a legal...

This article analyzes data from every certiorari petition involving either a bankruptcy case or an issue of bankruptcy law since the Bankruptcy Code's 1978 enactment. In bankruptcy cases, the certiorari process has favored governmental and institutional litigants. The statistical result is...