Corporate bankruptcy is a defining characteristic of the market economy. It encapsulates the fundamental conflicts between capital and labour, owners and managers, debtors and creditors, the state and the market. Yet, with one or two notable exceptions, the political and social dynamics of bankruptcy law and practice have been overlooked by serious socio-legal scholars. This book remedies that neglect. Adopting an approach that compares English and American law, the authors identify the underlying political forces that established corporate bankruptcy law on both sides of the Atlantic. The book demonstrates how, by a recursive loop of professional self-interest, corporate insovency regulation is the creation of the lawyers who interpret and administer it. This book will be welcomed as an important sociological study and advances our understanding of how substantive law results from conflicts among the professionals who help to create it.

Corporate bankruptcy is a defining characteristic of the market economy. It encapsulates the fundamental conflict between capital and labor. But, with one or two notable exceptions, the political and social dynamics of bankruptcy law and practice have been largely overlooked by sociolegal scholars. This book remedies that neglect. It compares key English and American insolvency laws to identify those underlying political forces that established corporate bankruptcy law on both sides of the Atlantic. Also, it shows how and why corporate insolvency regulation is the creation of the lawyers who interpret and administer it. This book will be welcomed as an important sociological study, for it advances our understanding of how substantive law results from conflicts among the professionals who help to make it.

a rich and multifaceted study of corporate bankruptcy reform ... This comprehensive book offers something for almost anyone