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Lecture Notes: Bankruptcy |
A little background and history;:How did we get to where we are now.
Substantive case law and statutes: What is the law that creates bankruptcy rights and duties?
Procedure: What is the source of the procedural rules governing bankruptcy practice?
The old Romans had slavery to enforce debts.. Later, Italians.doing business in the town square each had a bench where they could be found, doing business. If one of them couldn't pay his bills, he found his bench broken one morning. His bench (banco) was broken (rupto).
The English, where we get our common law, had debtors prison. Go to jail until your bills get paid.
Under the United States Constitution: Article I, Section 8, #4. "Congress shall have the power . . . to establish . . . uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcy throughout the United States." Notice that this was written into the constitution before the Bill of Rights. The people who wrote the constitution wanted something better than debtors prison.
Under authority of the constitution, Congress passed some inconsequential acts, but then finally got around to passing the Bankruptcy Act of 1898. "The Act" was 14 Chapters, numbered sequentially. Most basic concepts of modern U.S. bankruptcy law established here.
Next
came the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978. "The Code". uses
odd Chapter numbers: 1,2,5,7,9,11, 13.(Later we added Chapter 12.) The code
is still with us, although there have been and will be some amendments, the
basic structure remains unchanged, using the basic concepts established in
1898.