This article is based on a February 2016 keynote address given at the University of Puerto Rico Law Review Symposium “Public Debt and the Future of Puerto Rico.” Thus, much of it remains written in the first person, and so the reader may imagine the joy of being in the audience. (Citations...

Those in the cross-border bankruptcy community hiding under rocks may not have heard about the monumental decisions in the co-trials in the Canadian-US Nortel bankruptcy proceedings. The decisions are thoughtful, innovative, practical, and important. They warrant a detailed case comment or two...

Choice of law in cross-border insolvency is gaining increased attention, not just by lowly academics but by policymakers who actually matter. I argue it is time to bring some normative guidance to the burgeoning reform efforts. At the highest level of theoretical purity, universalism seems to...

This book review probes Michael Waibel's new book, Sovereign Defaults Before International Courts and Tribunals. Waibel's project is ambitious, exploring international attempts to address sovereign defaults over the past century and a half. Through painstaking and comprehensive historical...

Financial contracts, such as swaps, repos, and options, are excepted from the Bankruptcy Code's automatic stay by the so-called derivative “safe harbors.” The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 provides a graphic illustration of how these safe harbors make it almost impossible for a...

Recent empirical legal scholarship on the consumer bankruptcy system has uncovered a marked rise in the proportion of elder Americans filing for relief under the Bankruptcy Code. But these studies have not probed the reasons behind that rise, an omission this Article seeks to address. Professor...

Although discussed nowhere in the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, fiduciary duties play a central role in guiding the administration of an insolvent debtor's assets. This book chapter explores the fiduciary obligations of trustees (including DIPs) under both statute and common law, with a special focus on...

A surprising number of courts believe that bankruptcy judges lack authority to impose criminal contempt sanctions. We attempt to rectify this misunderstanding with a march through the historical treatment of contempt-like powers in bankruptcy, the painful statutory history of the 1978 Bankruptcy...

Soft law is on the ascent in international insolvency, seeming now to occupy a preferred status over boring old conventions. An arguably constitutive aspect of soft law, which some contend provides a normative justification for international law generally, is its "dialogic" nature, by which I...

The Great Recession has brought greater sovereign debt defaults, which in turn have brought a surfeit of academic explorations and policy discussions of sovereign debt restructuring. The purpose of this article is to offer yet one more idea for the hopper of what to do with the seemingly...