Academic

Halliday, Block-Lieb, and Carruthers on Debtor Participation in Bankruptcy Reform

By Lawrence Solum

Terence C. Halliday , Susan Block-Lieb and Bruce Carruthers (American Bar Foundation , Fordham University School of Law) have posted Missing Debtors: National Lawmaking and Global Norm-Making of Corporate Bankruptcy Regimes (Center on Law and Globalization Research Paper No. 08-03) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Our comparative case studies of bankruptcy lawmaking reveal an apparent political universal. In neither advanced (U.S., Britain) nor developing countries (China, Indonesia, Korea) do debtors consistently play a major role in corporate bankruptcy reforms. This is a puzzle. Debtors (managers/owners) are the subjects of bankruptcy law. It is their corporations that are liquidated or reorganized. It is upon their discretion that much decision-making relies in corporate restructuring. Yet, with few exceptions, they are little consulted or show little interest in contributing to reforms. How is this to be explained? Moreover, a similar pattern can be observed UNCITRAL's global norm-making for corporate bankruptcy regimes. Debtors are even more remote from the creation of model laws, legislative guides, and insolvency principles. Yet the central tendency of global norms has been to strengthen the rehabilitative ideal in corporate reorganization. Based on our research on global normmaking and national lawmaking in Britain, the U.S., China, Indonesia and Korea, the paper considers six hypotheses: (1) Debtors do not recognize their own interests; (2) Debtors are unable to mobilize; (3) Debtors shy away from the odium of corporate failure; (4) Debtors are blocked by other stakeholders from exercising influence; (5) The most powerful debtors can solve their financial problems outside bankruptcy law; (6) Debtors' interests are articulated by other influential stakeholders.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on September 22, 2008 (boomark / email).