What Can the Past Teach Today’s Bankruptcy Law Students, Lawyers, Judges, and Restructuring Professionals?: An Annotated Bibliography of Histories of Debt and Bankruptcy

Abstract

This essay presents a bibliography of selected works of history about debt and bankruptcy in the United States. The author laments the lack of historical knowledge about these topics among law students, bankruptcy lawyers and judges, and restructuring professionals, and he discusses the nature of historical knowledge and the means for acquiring it in the context of bankruptcy and restructuring matters. Twenty books are listed and organized under subcategories of business credit, consumer credit, insolvency and bankruptcy law and practice, and others of relevance; and a blurb about each book is provided. The author observes that “there is nothing new under the sun,” and the article makes the case that the targeted audiences will find such histories useful. Collectively, the bibliography demonstrates that, since colonial times, credit always been the sine qua non of business enterprise in the United States, and that the legal process for dealing with financially troubled firms and individuals and for resolving the problems flowing from defaulted and unpayable debts—the law we call bankruptcy—has a long, continuous history that is both interesting and worthwhile.

Keywords: bankruptcy, insovency, credit, debt, defaulted debt, bankruptcy law and practice, bibliography

JEL Classification: K00, K10, K19, K20, K29, K30, K39, K40, K49