Academic & Scholarly News

Passing of Ian Fletcher

07/25/18

It is with great sadness that the news reached my desk of the passing of Professor Ian Fletcher of University College London. Ian was a leading international insolvency expert, well known to all of us at Credit Slips, and we extend our condolences to his family and friends. Professor Bob Wessels has a tribute.

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Access to Justice, Consumer Bankruptcy Edition

06/26/18

The Great Recession, the CFPB's creation, the rise of debt buying, changes in the debt collection industry, and advances in data collection have encouraged more research recently into issues of access to justice in the context of consumer law and consumer bankruptcy.

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Call for Papers on College Completion and Student Debt

05/21/18

For those of you writing on student loans, you may be interested in a new call for papers for a conference I am working to organize. On November 30, 2018, the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy, Boston College Law School, and the National Consumer Law Center will hold a daylong symposium on Post-Secondary Education Non-completion and Student Loan Debt on the Law School campus.   Our call for

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Junk Cities: Insolvency Crises in Overlapping Municipalities

04/11/18

I have a new paper out on municipal insolvency. It's called "Junk Cities:  Resolving Insolvency Crises in Overlapping Municipalities," 107 Cal. L. Rev (forthcoming 2019).  The paper is co-authored with Aurelia Chaudhury and David Schleicher.

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Coming Soonish to a Bookstore Near You

04/02/18

Assuming you still have those in your town. If not, also available for preorder now is my forthcoming book, entitled The Law of Failure.  It is my attempt to consider all of American business insolvency law as a whole. Not just bankruptcy but also assignments, receiverships, and even oddball things like Nevada's campground receivership provisions.

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Summer Associate Arbitration Clauses: Why Disclosure Isn't Enough

03/26/18

This weekend a mini-scandal erupted over the law firm Munger, Tolles requiring its summer associates to sign pre-dispute arbitration clauses. Munger, Tolles was rightly shamed into rescinding the practice, but one suspects that Munger, Tolles isn't the only firm doing or contemplating doing this. 

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People’s Pre-Bankruptcy Struggles -- New Paper from the Consumer Bankruptcy Project

02/20/18

The current Consumer Bankruptcy Project (CBP)’s co-investigators (myself, Slipster Bob Lawless, and past Slipsters Katie Porter & Debb Thorne) just posted to SSRN our new article (forthcoming in Notre Dame Law Review), Life in the Sweatbox.

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Bankruptcy's Lorelei: The Dangerous Allure of Financial Institution Bankruptcy

02/07/18

I have a new (short!) paper out, Bankruptcy's Lorelei:  The Dangerous Allure of Financial Institution Bankruptcy. The paper, which builds off of some Congressional testimony from 2015, makes the case that proposals for resolving large, systemically important financial institutions in bankruptcy are wrongheaded and ultimately dangerous.

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The Bootstrap Trap

02/07/18

I just had the pleasure of reading Duke Law Professor Sara Sternberg Greene's paper The Bootstrap Trap.  I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested in the intersection of consumer credit and poverty law.

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