Afterword

Summary

During the 1980s, Thomas Jackson and I showed how reorganization law took nonbankruptcy rights as it found them. It limited itself to sorting out the collective action problem that existed when a corporate debtor lacked the assets to meet all its obligations in full. The challenge was one of sorting out nonbankruptcy entitlements, ensuring that assets were being put to their highest valued use, and at the same time requiring the debtor to play by the same rules as everyone else. Although this view of reorganization law does not seem especially controversial today, it led to much sturm and drang, most notably perhaps in the spirited, but consistently civil debates that I had with Elizabeth Warren during this period.