Suchergebnisse

Foreign corporations facing financial distress have a choice: resructure in their home jurisdiction or file for bankruptcy in the United States. And some number of foreign corporations do file bankruptcy petitions in the United States. But besides the occasional anecdotal account, how frequently this actually happens or what types of foreign firms are apt to file in the United States is almost completely unstudied. American firms that file under chapter 11 and foreign firms that file under chapter 15 are the frequent objects of study, but what of the foreign firms that file under chapters 7 or 11? We address this obvious gap in the literature by constructing a database of foreign corporate debtors. By analyzing this new dataset, we conclude that the United States Bankruptcy Code is used by foreign debtors in a way that is diametrically opposed to most of the extant thinking on transnational insolvency. In particular, foreign debtors use the American bankruptcy system to impose a global discharge on assets, without the cooperation of any jurisdiction beyond the United States, where the case is pending. This is in complete contrast with the efforts of UNCITRAL to facilitate cross-border cooperation among jurisdictions.

This issue of the VANDERBILT LAW REVIEW contains two outstanding student pieces on bankruptcy law. Few would be surprised by this observation. As to the quality of the works, they fall in with a long tradition of outstanding student scholarship published by the REVIEW. The choice of topic-bankruptcy law-also does not raise eyebrows. After all, Congress has recently enacted the most sweeping changes to the Bankruptcy Code since its original enactment in 1978. This legislation was the culmination of a more than decade long effort to revise our nation's bankruptcy law. Any major reform effort of this scope surely generates puzzles for students to solve. One would expect that the coming years will see a steady flow of student work grappling with the changes wrought by the new legislation. Constitutional issues and interpretative problems have already hit the courts, and ambitious students looking for challenging legal issues on which to hone their analytical skills will find much in the new law to keep them busy.