David, you surely know more about this than I do, but I thought that bankruptcy law developed very politically. My understanding was that political pressures first allowed individuals to declare bankruptcy as an alternative to debtor's prison. Modern bankruptcy law developed in the course of the search of railroad failures in the late 19th century, when the courts were trying to accommodate bondholders.
The ranking of debts in bankruptcy court seems rather arbitrary rather than a matter of justice. Why should a worker who earned a pension after 30 years of hard labor on an assembly line have fewer rights than a speculator who buys a depressed bond in the hopes of making a profit? David S. wrote: I don't want to exaggerate, but the auto bankruptcies will be key evidence whether the US legal system remains independent and free of government control, which is a major reason for the economic success of the US, or whether we have become a banana republic in which the court system is nothing more than instrumentality of the state, which would be a real turning point and, in my opinion, disastrous. Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 530 898 5321 fax 530 898 5901 http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
