The Unwritten Law of Corporate Reorganizations

Reveals the unwritten and hitherto inaccessible principles that govern the restructuring of large corporations in Chapter 11.

Douglas G. Baird (Author)

9781009061018, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 May 2022

200 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.1 cm, 0.31 kg

'… Baird's account of unwritten law yields a framework for making sense of an otherwise puzzling and troubling tendency of bankruptcy law.' Vincent S. J. Buccola, The Yale Law Journal

The law of corporate reorganizations controls the fate of enterprises worth billions of dollars and has reshaped entire sectors of the economy, yet its inner workings largely remain a mystery. Judges must police a small and closed fraternity of professionals as they sit down at a conference table and forge a new future for a distressed business, but little appears to tell judges how they are to do this. Judges, however, are in fact bound by a coherent set of unwritten principles that derive from a statute Parliament passed in 1571. These principles are not simply norms or customary practices. They have hard edges, judges must enforce them, and parties are bound by them as they are by any other law. This book traces the evolution of these unwritten principles and makes accessible a legal world that has long been closed off to outsiders.

1. Badges of fraud
2. A seat at the table
3. The credit men
4. A new deal
5. Priority matters
6. A thumb on the scale
7. Bargaining after the fall
8. Looking for runway
Afterword.

Subject Areas: Company, commercial & competition law [LNC]