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.

• Part 1. The Balance of Power in the Corporate Credit Network


• 1: Meta-bargaining over Property Rights


• 2: Professional Innovation and the Recursivity of Law


• 3: The Structure of Influence in Bankruptcy Law-making


• Part 2. Reconstituting Property Rights


• Introduction


• 4: Weakening the Strong: Banks and Secured Lenders (with J Scott Parrott)


• 5: Restraining the State and Utilities


• 6: Enabling Managers


• 7: Empowering the Weak: The Forgotten Class


• Part 3. Reconstituing Jurisdictional Rights


• Introduction


• 8: Privatization and Nationalization of Bankruptcy Administration


• 9: Jurisdictional Conflicts in the Market


• 10: Jurisdictional Struggles within the State


• Part 4. Conclusion


• 11: Professions in the Institutionalization of Business Rescue

Bruce G Carruthers is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology of Northwestern University. He was educated in Canada and the USA. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and has taught at Northwestern University since 1990, where he is Graduate Director of the sociology program. He is a consulting editor of the American Journal of Sociology.
Terence C Halliday is Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation, President of the National Institute for Social Science Information and Chair of the Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association. He was educated in New Zealand, Canada and the USA. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and has taught at the Australian National University and the University of Chicago.