small business

Attorneys' Advice on Representing Religious Organizations in Chapter 11

02/28/14

As part of my study of religious organizations' Chapter 11 cases, I interviewed attorneys who represented a variety of churches and other faith-based institutions in their reorganization cases. Some of my findings are presented in this new paper. In short, the interviews confirm my previous conclusion based on an analysis of documents filed in religious organizations' Chapter 11 cases: reorganization oftentimes can be beneficial for these debtors.

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In Defense of Bankruptcy Courts (or, Is Bankruptcy Really That Exceptional?)

09/18/12

Although not always acknowledged expressly, exceptionalism is pervasive in bankruptcy scholarship. Some work makes no attempt to contexualize bankruptcy within the federal courts, apparently assuming its unique qualities (for example, the disinterest in most bankruptcy venue scholarship about venue laws applicable to other multi-party federal litigation). But other projects are more deliberate in their exceptionalist pursuits.

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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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Article 9 and Bankruptcy Judges

05/15/12

A prior post addressed a proposed amendment to Article 9's official comments stating that the date of an Article 9 filing relates back to the initial filing date even if the debtor did NOT authorize the filing at that time. This post returns to that topic for two reasons. First, although it is risky to generalize, I sense that bankruptcy judges may still be unaware of this proposed am

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