Bankruptcy and the U.S. Supreme Court

Ronald J. Mann has been a commercial law professor at Columbia University, New York for the last ten years. Previously he has taught at the University of Texas, the University of Michigan, and Washington University, St Louis. He has also argued bankruptcy cases in the Supreme Court while working in the Office of the Solicitor General, and he has clerked for Justice Powell on the United States Supreme Court.

Part I. Setting the Stage: 1. Literature review; 2. Data and methods; 3. Congress and the Bankruptcy Code of 1978; 4. By the numbers; Part II. The Hard Cases; Section 1. A Tale of Missed Opportunities: Congress, the Court, and the Bankruptcy Clause: 5. From marathon to wellness: assessing the 'public[ity]' of the bankruptcy power; 6. Sovereign immunity and the bankruptcy power: from Hoffman to Katz; Section 2. A Study in Interpretive Strategy: The Court, the Solicitor General, and the Code: 7. Bankruptcy versus labor law: Bildisco; 8. Bankruptcy versus environmental law: midLantic; 9. Bankruptcy versus criminal law: Kelly; 10. Setting text against tradition: Ron Pair; 11. Bankruptcy and state sovereignty: BFP; Part III. Amici and the Court: 12. The Supreme Court, the Solicitor General, and statutory interpretation; 13. Learning from amici; Part IV. Conclusion: Appendix A. The Supreme Court's bankruptcy cases; Appendix B. Available papers of the Justices; Appendix C. References to the hard cases; Appendix D. Sources of the Court's citations; Appendix E. Sources from the Solicitor General and other amici.