Bankruptcy Generally

What's On at a Courthouse Near You

07/17/12

In addition to a post last week broadly raising visitors' physicial interaction with courts, an earlier post discussed variation in the website availability of daily calendars for U.S. bankruptcy courtrooms.

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Representation and Realities of (Bankruptcy) Court Work

07/10/12

The Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities held a symposium on "Courts: Representing and Contesting Ideologies of the Public Sphere" in 2011, and recently published papers from this event.

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Some Advice from the IMF: Cramdown Mortgages in Bankruptcy

07/04/12

The International Monetary Fund has focused its critical gaze on us. Just in time for the holiday marking the end of our colonial period, the IMF has completed its "Mission to the United States of America."  See here.  The IMF has held up its neocolonial mirror and found us problematic: "The U.S. recovery remains tepid."  Anyone disagree? Annoying to have outsiders tell us the truth.

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Bankruptcy Court Calls

05/16/12

In connection with some ongoing research, I have noticed that U.S. bankruptcy courts have different approaches to informing the public about matters being taken up in open court. Many provide PDFs of court calls on their websites up to several weeks in advance (recognizing that matters settle, are postponed, or can change for other reasons). But on other bankruptcy court websites, it is difficult to find out what's happening on any given day. Might the informed readership of this blog offer reasons that courts refrain from making that information available on their websites?

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Sit Back and RadLAX

04/18/12

I'm having trouble getting excited over RadLAX going before SCOTUS.

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Littwin on Bankruptcy Without a Lawyer

02/27/12

A few weeks ago, Katie Porter noted the release of the new book, Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class. We are trying to feature posts from the authors of Broke about their contributions. Today's post comes from Professor Angela Littwiin of the University of Texas School of Law and a founding member of Credit Slips:

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The Backdrop for BROKE: Consumer Debt Then and Now

01/30/12

In the introductory chapter of the book, Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class,  I present some data about consumer debt levels in the United States.

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Consumer Friendly Forms for Bankruptcy

01/28/12

In many respects, bankruptcy is a one-size-fits-all legal process. Yes, there are ample differences in the law (and a world of difference in practice) between the bankruptcy of a large corporation and a typical consumer. But the Bankruptcy Code itself contains plenty of provisions of general applicability. A major example of the one-size-fits-all approach to bankruptcy is the official forms for filing a case.

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Race and Chapter 13

01/21/12

As Adam noted in his kind post, the New York Times today featured our study, "Race, Attorney Influence, and Bankruptcy Chapter Choice." My co-authors are Credit Slips blogger Jean Braucher, a law professor at the University of Arizona, and Dov Cohen, a professor at the University of Illinois who holds a cross appointment in psychology and law. And, we all express many thanks to the NYT reporter, Tara Siegel Bernard, who spent a lot of time slogging through the statistics and legal intricacies in our study.

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