The purpose of the symposium is to address global and domestic insolvency law issues.

The project of the comprehensive reform of Japanese insolvency law started in October 1996. After many enactments and amendments, there are now two types of judicial proceedings for personal insolvencies in Japanese insolvency law. The first category is straight bankruptcy proceedings in which the debtor can be discharged; the other is special Civil Rehabilitation proceedings for individual debtors. In this Article, I will first give a brief overview of the special Civil Rehabilitation proceedings for individual debtors, including a (...) short description of two types of proceedings, and legislative issues. Then I will give a brief overview of major amendments of the Bankruptcy Law concerning individual bankruptcies, including amendments relating to the scope of exemption and discharge proceedings. (shrink)

Israeli enforcement law uses both direct and indirect enforcement — the former via attachment of assets, and the latter via imprisonment of the debtor. The use of indirect enforcement via imprisonment is problematic, as it violates the basic rights of the debtor. I will argue that in response to this problem, the law created a framework for the "debtor of limited means." I will demonstrate that not only does this create an improper definition of the task of the Chief Enforcement (...) Officer, but that it is also an inefficient way of dealing with an insolvent debtor. I will propose that the system differentiate between debtors who cannot pay their debts and those who do not want to pay their debts. I believe that encouraging the insolvent debtor to file for of bankruptcy will avoid the problem of imprisonment and enable the Chief Enforcement Officer to return to his natural role as judge of enforcement. Additionally, I suggest creating a separate track of "consumer enforcement," which would avoid the whole system of installments, imprisonment, and debtors of limited means, at least regarding consumer credit. (shrink)

Arbitration and insolvency proceedings are legal instruments governed by different objectives and different legal principles. While in arbitration the autonomy of the parties plays a major role, all insolvency proceedings are collective proceedings where autonomy of the parties is strictly limited, the majority of issues are regulated by binding legal provisions and strong controlling powers are vested into insolvency court. Therefore, in this article the authors analyse the issues of compatibility between insolvency proceedings and arbitration. The (...) Lithuanian legal framework which was in force until 30 June 2012 was ambiguous. According to the wording of Article 11 of the previous Law on Commercial Arbitration, disputes connected with bankruptcy shall not be submitted to arbitration. It was not entirely clear whether this provision was restricted to ‘core’ insolvency issues such as opening and conduct of the proceedings, appointment of the office holder, administration of the estate, liquidation etc. or it also included all other questions related with insolvency. The jurisprudence of the Lithuanian courts gave a broad meaning to the restriction expressed in the Law on Commercial Arbitration. Accordingly, such questions as verification of claims and disputes with the creditors were also excluded from arbitration after announcement of bankruptcy of the debtor. The authors argue that distinction should be drawn between cases in which an insolvent enterprise is a claimant and where it is a defendant. It is also important to draw a line between arbitration agreements entered into before announcement of bankruptcy and arbitration agreements concluded by the bankruptcy trustee with the consent of the majority of creditors. In this article, the new Law on Commercial Arbitration which has entered into force on 30 June 2012 is analysed and according to which an insolvent enterprise remains bound by arbitration agreement in both cases where it is a claimant and where it is a defendant. Several contentious issues of the new law are identified and analysed in the article, such as the position of other creditors in the proceedings, relation between arbitration and restructuring procedure, enforceability of arbitration agreement in cases where an insolvent enterprise lacks funding to pay arbitration costs etc. (shrink)

The adoption of the Collateral Directive 2002/47/EC represents an important progress towards the implementation of a truly harmonized single financial market. The Lithuanian Financial Collateral Arrangements Act (the Law) has implemented the Directive 2002/47/EC in time. The Law establishes special regulation for financial securities given in transactions between „professional market participants“, between market participants and other companies, inclusive small and medium-sized enterprises. The Law applies to certain transactions on the financial markets and aims at stabilizing the financial markets. Essentially, the (...) Directive and the national implementing law ensure the enforceability of financial collateral arrangements and provide for rapid and non-formalistic enforcement of financial collateral procedures in insolvency cases. The realization of financial collaterals is made easier and cheaper. (shrink)

This article considers Hugo Grotius’s ideas on a specific topic of commercial law, analysing his position and potential contributions to early modern Dutch insolvency legislation. It might be questioned how ‘Hollandic’ Grotius’s interpretations of legal solutions for insolvency as presented in the Inleidinge tot de Hollandsche Rechts-Geleerdheid actually were. Grotius’s treatment of cessie van goede is relatively strict, whereas compositions are hardly mentioned. A rather different image rises from his later work. Here, Grotius displays a more radical view, (...) in specific cases allowing the sovereign to interfere in private property rights and to restructure debts for the common good. It is an intriguing question if and to what extent these ideas can be related to contemporary Dutch insolvency practices. (shrink)

Biobanks hold out the prospect of significant public and private benefit, as genetic information contained in tissue samples is mined for information. However, the storing of human tissue samples and genetic information for research and/or therapeutic purposes raises a number of serious privacy and autonomy concerns. These concerns are compounded when one considers the possibility that a biobank or its owner might go bankrupt. Insolvency impairs the ability of enforcement regimes, and liability-based regimes in particular, to enforce legal norms. (...) The goal of this essay is to develop guideposts for thinking about private and public enforcement of privacy imposed by donors on tissue samples and/or genetic information when a biobank becomes insolvent. (shrink)

Traditionally, civil law jurisdictions in Scandinavia and the continent of Europe have not been willing to acknowledge the appropriateness of extending bankruptcy relief to consumer debtors and discharging any part of their debts. The opposition was based on the importance of upholding the sanctity of contractual obligations: pacta sunt servanda. This attitude stood in contrast to the fresh start philosophy of US bankruptcy law, which embraced a more forgiving attitude, focusing on the reintegration of the insolvent debtor into society, substantially (...) free of debt, after he has filed for bankruptcy and surrendered his non-exempt property for distribution among his creditors. The relaxation of credit controls and the rapid increase in the number of insolvent debtors in the late 1980s and early 1990s has forced many continental jurisdictions to reconsider their traditional opposition. They have since adopted debt adjustment plans providing various forms of debt relief to overcommitted debtors but only a substantial number of years after the initial proceedings. The American reaction has gone in the opposite direction. With the adoption of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, the United States has reversed its century old liberal fresh start tradition. The 2005 Act imposes a formidable means test as well as other preconditions to determine whether a debtor has sufficient discretionary income to pay off twenty percent of his or her unsecured debts under a Chapter 13 plan. If the answer is yes, the debtor is denied the right to file a bankruptcy petition under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code. This paper asks whether these developments on opposite sides of the Atlantic suggest that facts on the ground are more important than dogma and deeply entrenched beliefs. The author’s answer is that while there is certainly a trend towards convergence between continental European and US approaches to consumer insolvency, it is much too soon to speak of a common culture and a common approach. He notes, however, that Commonwealth jurisdictions have long adopted a means test to determine a debtor’s eligibility for discharge from debt and suggests that continental scholars would have done better to study the Commonwealth experience as embodying a suitable compromise than to flirt with the US fresh start philosophy, only to reject it as too alien to the continental moral sense. (shrink)

Over ten years have elapsed since Virginia passed the nation's first criminal DNA banking law, which authorized law enforcement authorities to collect DNA samples from certain categories of offenders for the purposes of performing profile analysis. Within nine years, Rhode Island became the fiftieth state to enact a similar statute. The passage of a decade since the first enactment provides a convenient opportunity to assess the strengths and weaknesses of ethical safeguards under present law as well as predict the likely (...) direction of future developments.DNA forensics are merely the latest in a long line of biologically based identifying law enforcement technologies that include fingerprints and serotyping. Nevertheless, DNA has properties that make it significantly different than its predecessors with respect to the ethical and social concerns it raises. (shrink)

The paper deals with the problem of translating selected insolvency terminology from Polish into English and from English into Polish. The re- search corpora encompassed the Insolvency Act 1986 as amended and Ustawa z dnia 28 lutego 2003. Prawo upadłościowe i naprawcze [the Act on Polish Insolvency and Rehabilitation Law of 28th February 2003 as amended]. The research methods included: the comparison of parallel texts, the method of axiomatisation of the legal linguistic reality, the termino- logical analysis (...) of the corpus material, the concept of adjusting the target text to the communicative needs and requirements of the community of recipients and the techniques of providing equivalents for non-equivalent terminology. The research hypothesis has been so formulated that the parametrisation of legal reality may assist in finding more adequate equivalents and determine differences in meaning of compared source and target language terms, which in turn facilitates the choice of a more adequate technique of providing equivalents for non-equivalent or partially equivalent legal terminology meeting the com- municative needs of translation recipients. The research results revealed that insolvency terminology is highly system-bound and available equivalents may often be misleading for the community of target text recipients. (shrink)

Economists and legal scholars routinely posit an implicit contract between Japanese firms and their principal lender. Under this arrangement, the bank implicitly agrees to rescue the firm when times turn bad. Out of court, it rescues the firm from insolvency. Not only does it save the investments specific to the troubled firm, it lowers the use of costly bankruptcy proceedings and cuts the costs of those bankruptcy procedures firms do occasionally invoke. Given the creditor-shareholder conflicts of interest that arise (...) as firms approach insolvency, such arrangements would seem unstable. Yet according to a long sociological tradition, conflicts of interest matter less in Japan than in the West. According to the emerging economic and legal tradition, Japanese economic actors do face those conflicts, but keep them in check through reputational concerns, close-knit ties, and government supervision. Using two datasets of troubled firms from the 1970s and 1980s, we ask whether Japanese main banks in fact rescue distressed borrowers. We find no evidence that they do: large Japanese firms fail; when large firms approach insolvency, main banks do not increase the share of the firm’s debt they bear; stronger ties between distressed firms and their main bank do not facilitate loans; and troubled firms do not try to preserve their main bank relationship. All told, the claim that Japanese banks ever implicitly agreed to rescue firms is sheer myth. That Japanese banks let troubled firms fail is no recent development; it has been thus for decades. Conflicts of interest do indeed matter in Japan and long have. They matter enough to prevent precisely the incentive-incompatible rescue deals that scholars in the field so routinely posit. (shrink)

This Article is made up of two parts. The first part reflects on the dominant functionalist approach to comparative consumer bankruptcy and suggests that this might be supplemented by a political economy analysis that addresses the role of national and international interest groups, including professionals, and ideology in understanding different national responses to overindebtedness in North America and Europe. The second part examines current reforms to consumer bankruptcy and responses to overindebtedness in the UK through this political economy lens and (...) concludes that competition among professional groups, the role and interests of the Insolvency Service, and the ideology of the Third Way in consumer policy will influence the ultimate structure adopted for addressing consumer insolvency. A study of the English experience suggests that there is also an element of national path dependency to consumer insolvency reform that may resist pressures towards convergence of approaches between countries in addressing issues of consumer insolvency. (shrink)

The Law of Set-off has established itself as a leading authority on its subject. This is a developing area of law and the fourth edition brings the book fully up to date with the latest case law since the third edition was published in 2003. Including coverage of Commonwealth decisions, this is the most thorough work on Set-Off for legal practitioners. New coverage includes analysis of Secretary of State for Trade and Industry v Frid in relation to insolvency set-off, (...) Re SSSL Realisations Ltd in relation to the rule in Cherry v Boultbee, Muscat v Smith in relation to equitable set-off, and in Australia, International Air Transport Association v Ansett Australia Holdings Ltd in relation to the "British Eagle" principle. The book provides an authoritative commentary on the principles governing the law of set-off and is an essential purchase for banking, finance, and insolvency lawyers world-wide. (shrink)

In the mid-1990s the recession is turning to a recovery. Around the world corporate bodies which fell victim to structural changes and high interest rates finally get buried. However, many feel that corporate funerals are not enough to clear away the litter of the past, crucifying people is required too.In the common law countries, where the treatment of bankrupts is tougher than in the U.S., and in continental Europe, where discharge of debts has been virtually unheard of until recently, the (...) failed entrepreneurs' heads are wanted on the platter. A high level of debt and an extravagant lifestyle combine to provoke most demands for reprisals. (shrink)

The mystery does not always end when the crime has been solved. Indeed, the most insolvable problems of crime and punishment are not so much who committed the crime, but how to see that justice is done. Now, in this illuminating volume, one of America's great legal thinkers, Norval Morris, addresses some of the most perplexing and controversial questions of justice in a highly singular fashion--by examining them in fictional form, in what he calls "parables of the law." The protagonist (...) of these stories, the figure who must see that justice is done, is Eric Blair, a name familiar to most readers: it's the real name of George Orwell. In fact, Morris has set his tales in the time and place of Orwell's famous essay, "Shooting an Elephant," in Moulmein, Burma, in the 1920s. What might seem a curious strategy at first glance--borrowing Orwell's persona to narrate these tales--is actually a brilliant stroke. For in Eric Blair we have an ideal narrator to highlight the complexities of justice: an untrained police lieutenant and junior magistrate, uncertain of judgement--and all the more likely to anguish over judgement, and to examine every facet of a case before deciding. And in 1920s Moulmein we have a neutral time and space in which to consider--free of our own political, religious, or social prejudices--a set of contemporary legal and moral questions that rarely find so calm an arena. And these stories certainly address some highly charged issues--capital punishment, insanity as a murder defense, the "battered wife syndrome" as a murder defense, child custody, "parental neglect" due to religious conviction--to name a few. In each tale, Norval Morris excels at placing Blair at the center of a controversy that has no easy answer, and that he and he alone must decide. In the title story, for instance, a retarded boy, whose only understanding of sex comes from the brothel in which he works, accidentally murders a young girl while raping her, his only defense being "Please sir, I paid her." Blair can see that the boy doesn't realize that he has committed a crime, but both the Burmese and the European community of Moulmein demand the boy's execution. Does capital punishment make sense in such an instance? Does it ever make sense? To broaden our understanding of these intricate cases, Morris concludes each story with a perceptive and often provocative commentary on each issue. After "Brothel Boy," for instance, Morris points out that no reputable study has ever shown capital punishment to be an effective deterrent to future murders, and more surprisingly, that paroled murderers commit proportionately fewer homicides than paroled felons who used a firearm in the commission of their crime. Norval Morris is one of America's foremost experts on crime and punishment, and the stories collected here represent the culmination of a lifetime of thought on the major criminal law debates of our time. A reader of these tales will come away with a deeper understanding of these debates and with a profound respect for the intricacies of justice and the complexity of the law. (shrink)

It is a popular perception that administrative receivers and their appointors hold «too much» power in relation to troubled companies. Many who hold this view have called for the reform of insolvency law in order to redress the balance of power. This issue is timely, because insolvency law is currently under review. This article argues that although the law's formal structure is imbalanced, it can nevertheless generate savings for parties, by allowing a concentrated creditor who has invested in (...) information-gathering about the debtor to conduct a private insolvency procedure. It is suggested that this procedure is likely to be more efficient than one conducted by a state official, and that it is likely to reduce the costs of debt finance, a matter of particular importance for small and medium-sized businesses. Empirical data are presented from 26 interviews with practitioners, which shed further light on the operation of receivership. Finally, the current law is compared with possible alternatives. It is argued that the case for wide-ranging reform is not made out. (shrink)

This volume offers a comprehensive presentation of European insolvency law and considers questions relating to the cross-border insolvency proceeding. Due to the European Insolvency Regulation, the issues arising from the cross-border insolvency proceeding are no longer purely academic matters but are now present in the European area and have become problematic for professionals dealing with the application and interpretation of Community insolvency law.

Among the most complicated issues in the law of delict, in the case of multiple debtors, is to determine the scope of each co-debtor’s liability. The rule of proportional liability clearly favours debtors more than the aggrieved party. And, on the contrary, the solidary liability best suits the interests of the aggrieved party as the risk of co-debtor’s insolvency is transferred to the debtors. Furthermore, in the latter case, the debtors who attempt to allocate the scope of their liability (...) among themselves and fail to reach an agreement have to undergo two legal procedures: the first concerning the compensation to the creditor, and the second concerning the determination of the scope of their liability among themselves. Adequate balancing of the interests of the two parties (the debtor and the creditor) lies among the major tasks of tort law. Therefore, he law should seek specific rules instrumental in determining the scope of the co-debtor’s liability in the case of multiple debtors. The application of the rule of solidary liability is based on the assumption that individuals whose joint actions inflicted damage must compensate it together. (shrink)

In modern terms the characteristics of efficient working capital management plays a key role for businesses of any sector of the economy. Much of the domestic enterprises in a state of bankruptcy came to him because of a violation of the circulation of working capital. It is often the only way to improve the business and overcome the crisis of insolvency is to conclude long-term contracts for the financing needs in raw materials, i.e. agreements tolling operations. In this tolling (...) interaction is the main consideration of the interests of all parties and ensure the economic benefits of cooperation. Analyzing the legal framework for the organization and operations of tolling the following legal instruments that is currently in force can be highlighted, namely the Customs Code of Ukraine № 4495-VI of 03.02.2015 with amendments and supplements from 02.03.2015, the Tax Code of Ukraine № 2755-VI of 02.12.2010 with amendments of 17.09.2015, the Law of Ukraine "About Foreign Economic Activity" № 960-XII of 16.04.1991 with amendments and supplements from 02.03.2015. The study is dedicated to examining effective interaction of tolling schemes used throughout the world. Classification of tolling existing species is improved. The methodical approach created to assess the tolling scheme out of production for two alternatives to domestic producers: the accumulation of working capital and a loan in the amount of working capital needed for the company to work independently. The proposed running economic and mathematical tool of economic cooperation of manufacturers with tolling subjects will allow domestic enterprises with different initial conditions objectively assess the prospects for further cooperation with tolling scheme for manufacturers and choose the most suitable way out of the tolling scheme production. (shrink)

Oriental scholars discuss the concept of corporate personalitywithout any reference to Islamic law. A leading proponent of this view isJoseph Schacht; a western scholar of jurisprudence who contended that Islamicjurisprudence is limited to individual personality and devoid of corporate laws,hence, contractual agreements between corporations has no basis in Islamiclaw. Several scholars and researcher have responded with sufficient literatureon the status of an artificial person in Islamic law, but there are still issues withthe legal implication of corporate personality in the event (...) of financial distress.This study aims to explore Islamic threshold on fundamental principles ofcorporate personalities and its contemporary applications in the situation offinancial trouble. The study will employ the analytical approach in describingthe essential characteristics of a corporation as inherent in Islamic law throughinterpolation from the natural person and the possibility of adapting the existingconventional bankruptcy laws. This study employs an analytical approach to Islamic literature and regular related works. The study found out that eventhough the concept of financial distress has basis in Islamic law, it remainscomplicated as it entails insolvency, bankruptcy and interdiction in a debtorcreditorrelationship. Overall, further efforts need to be done to put theseconcepts into contemporary and applicable perspectives without violatingIslamic fundamental principle of justice and fair dealings. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to present contemporary varieties of panpsychism, i.e. a metaphysical view according to which at least some of the fundamental properties which constitute the world are mental. Despite its popularity in the history of philosophy, the view has been thought, in the analytic tradition, to be unscientific. Nevertheless, in light of some insolvable problems with the explanation of mind, panpsychism has become a view which is taken seriously as a correct metaphysical theory. In this article, (...) I propose a broad definition of panpsychism in order to uncover the possible causes of its variety. Subsequently, I argue that there are two main motivations to embrace panpsychism: the law of continuity and the acceptance of fundamental monism. Further, I present some problems with panpsychism, especially the problem of combination. In the final part, I suggest that panpsychism should be taken seriously in the recent debates about the mind, regardless of its difficulties. (shrink)

The fundamental ethical problem in bankruptcy is that insolvents have promised to pay their debts but can not keep their promise. The Ethics of Bankruptcy examines the morality of bankruptcy. The author compares and contrasts the Humean doctrine of promises as useful conventions with the Kantian view of autonomous agency constituting promissory obligations; he explores ethical concerns raised by forgiveness, utilitarianism and distributive justice and the moral aspects of insolvents' contractual, fiduciary, tortious and criminal liability. Finally, the author assesses recent (...) bankruptcy law reforms. Bankruptcies severly hurt creditors and society. For the insolvents and their families the experience is painful and stigmatising, yet philosophers have paid little attention to the moral aspects of this violent social phenomenon. The Ethics of Bankruptcy is the first comprehensive study that employs the tools of ethics to examine the controversies surrounding insolvency, which makes valuable and sometimes controversial reading in a decade recovering from the Recession. (shrink)

The art, craft, and science of policing -- Crime and criminals -- Criminal process and prosecution -- The crime-preventive impact of penal sanctions -- Contracts and corporations -- Financial markets -- Consumer protection -- Bankruptcy and insolvency -- Regulating the professions -- Personal injury litigation -- Claiming behavior as legal mobilization -- Families -- Labor and employment laws -- Housing and property -- Human rights instruments -- Constitutions -- Social security and social welfare -- Occupational safety and health -- (...) Environmental regulation -- Administrative justice -- Access to civil justice -- Judicial recruitment, training, and careers -- Trial courts and adjudication -- Appellate courts -- Dispute resolution -- Lay decision-makers in the legal process -- Evidence law -- Civil procedure and courts -- Collective actions -- Law and courts on development and democratization -- How does international law work? -- Lawyers and other legal service providers -- Legal pluralism -- Public images and understandings of courts -- Legal education and the legal academy -- The (nearly) forgotten early empirical legal research -- Quantitative approaches to empirical legal research -- Qualitative approaches to empirical legal research -- The need for multi-method approaches in empirical legal research -- Legal theory and empirical research -- Empirical legal research and policy-making -- The place of empirical legal research in the law school curriculum -- Empirical legal training in the US academy. (shrink)

According to Proudhon, before Kant, the believer and the philosopher moved “by an irresistible impulse,” asked themselves, “What is God!” They then asked themselves “Which, of all religions, is the best!” “In fact, if there does exist a Being superior to Humanity, there must also exist a system of the relations between this Being and Humanity. What then is this system! The search for the best religion is the second step that the human mind takes in reason and in faith. (...) Kant gave up these insolvable questions. He no longer asked himself what is God, and which is the best religion; he set about explaining the origin and development of the Idea of God; he undertook to work out the biography of this idea.” And the results he attained were as great as they were unexpected. “What we seek, what we see, in God, as Malebranche said ... is our own Ideal, the pure essence of Humanity ... The human soul does not become conscious of its Ego through premeditated contemplation, as the psychologists put it; the soul perceives something outside itself, as if it were a different Being face to face with itself, and it is this inverted image which it calls God. Thus morality, justice, order, law, are no longer things revealed from above, imposed upon our free will by a socalled Creator, unknown and ununderstandable; they are things that are proper and essential to us as our faculties and our organs, as our flesh and our blood. In two words religion and society are synonymous terms, man is as sacred to himself as if he were God.”. (shrink)

The number of credit delinquents in Korea had been growing steadily since 1997 and had reached 3,700,000 by the end of 2003, which was about 8.4% of the population. The government initiated several support programs, but the number of credit delinquents has decreased very slowly. In order to allow for successful recovery of credit delinquents, it is imperative to reduce debts in a more comprehensive manner, to clear the impediments for easy use of personal bankruptcy mechanisms, and to provide incentives (...) to encourage debtors to make progress on their repayment plans. While there has been much change in terms of learning to live with bankruptcy as an inevitable part of a market economy, there is still much to be done. The reality of "moral hazard" in bankruptcy discharge should be uncovered. Legal restraints discriminating against bankrupts must be removed. The repayment period of individual rehabilitation and individual workouts must be shortened to three years. Personal guarantors for debtors in rehabilitation proceedings should be protected as much as the debtors are during the repayment period in rehabilitation proceedings. Debtors need to be able to keep their mortgaged residences during the proceedings. The history of insolvency has shown that society can benefit as much as or more than debtors themselves from the discharge of unpaid debts because with a fresh start the debtor has an incentive to work hard. The starting point to personal bankruptcy law reform is this belief. (shrink)

This Article discusses a triangle of forces that affect the activity of small-medium enterprises. These forces are: limited liability, shareholder guarantees, and bankruptcy. Limited liability encourages entrepreneurship by reducing the personal risks shareholders are exposed to as a result of business failure. However, the limited liability shield creates the potential moral hazard of overinvestment. That is, the entrepreneur may involve the corporation in overly risky projects. To combat this risk, the lending practice requires entrepreneurs to sign a personal guarantee for (...) corporate debt. The guarantee serves as a bonding device that forces the entrepreneur to internalize the costs of the corporate activity. This Article first argues that while personal guarantees can serve this economic goal, the lending industry demands them excessively and they are overused. The overuse of guarantees unnecessarily subjects good corporate borrowers as well as bad ones to this practice and causes underinvestment. The third force of the triangle, a discharge of the shareholder’s debts in bankruptcy, may balance this inefficiency. It potentially softens the effect of the guarantee and thus requires the lender to further gather borrowerspecific information at the lending stage. Unfortunately, personal bankruptcy is underused by individual debtors mainly because of the stigma it implies. To rebalance the triangle, this Article proposes to encourage the shareholder’s partial relief of the guarantee through an amicable procedure. I call this procedure Velvet Bankruptcy. Velvet Bankruptcy would first procedurally consolidate the private collection from the shareholder-guarantor with the pending corporate bankruptcy case, by authorizing the court to extend the automatic stay to protect the shareholder-guarantor. To the extent the court is convinced that the collection would render the shareholder insolvent, it could reduce the guarantor’s liability. This would effectively constitute discharge without officially declaring the shareholder bankrupt. (shrink)

The year is 2100. Geena is the proud new owner of Emit, a state-of-the-art robot. She has just unwrapped him, the packaging strewn across the dining room floor. Emit is designed to replicate the outward behaviour of a human being down to the last detail . Emit responds to questions in much the same way humans do. Ask him how he feels and he will say he has had a tough day, has a slight headache, is sorry he broke that (...) vase, and so on. Geena flips the switch at the back of Emit's neck to ‘on’. Emit springs to life. (shrink)

Thinking tools is a regular feature that offers tips and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces tips and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously. Here we get to grips with two everyday reasoning errors.

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously. Here we get to grips with two everyday reasoning errors.

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously. Here l explain some of the techniques commonly used by ‘gurus’ to dupe people into thinking they have something profound to say.

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously. Here we get to grips with an everyday reasoning error: the gambler's fallacy.

Thinking Tools is a regular feature that introduces tips and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.

This paper provides an empirical study of Italian ‘boutique law firms’. By building on seventeen semi-structured interviews with lawyers, the paper explores institutional, professional, and societal features of such firms and their lawyers. The article shows that, while the rise of large law firms triggered a partitioning of the Italian legal field in the past decades, more recently this small, but economically important, sector of the profession revived the classic model of delivering legal services characterised by a strong sense of (...) autonomy and independence, a client-centered but ethically robust approach to legal practice, a close relationship with academic and political environments, and a focus on projecting a professional image of themselves and their firms in society. These are, in other words, the last bastion of professionalism and are increasingly gaining an important role in the Italian field. (shrink)

Thinking tools is a regular feature that offers tips and pointers on thinking clearly and rigorously.

"What is a military aircraft? John Law shows in his beautiful analysis that it is a constant oscillation between multiplicity and singularity.

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

A dialogue investigating whether the usual religious defences of belief in God are really up to the job.