The Debt Financing of Parenthood

Jacoby discusses the significant role of lenders in the parenthood market and how they might facilitate access and shape this industry in more profound ways. Second, she introduces the issue of financing assisted reproduction and adoption. Third, she reviews specialty loans for assisted reproduction and adoption, reflecting traditional research in case law and legal and nonlegal scholarly literature, as well as results from a review of news media and Web sites of prominent intermediaries and service suppliers. Lastly, she presents a sampling of political-economy implications relevant to assisted reproduction, leaving other issues for future investigation

The Legal Infrastructure of Ex Post Consumer Debtor Protections

This article reviews the legal infrastructure of tools that protect debtors’ assets or income, or that enable debtors to resolve secured credit problems during ordinary times (e.g., not specific crisis interventions). Part I divides consumer protection tools into functional categories: protection of assets and future income, and retention of property subject to a security interest in default. Part II identifies the location of similar tools in federal law, uniform state law, and non-uniform state law. Part III examines implications of this divided system, with a special focus on the bundling of debtor protections and the role of intermediaries. This discussion helps the reader imagine improvements to consumer protection whether or not new legal tools are added

Home Ownership Risk Beyond a Subprime Crisis: The Role of Delinquency Management

A surge in delinquency among risky subprime home mortgages has produced calls for front-end regulatory fixes as well as emergency foreclosure avoidance interventions. Whatever the merit of those interventions, this Essay calls for home mortgage delinquency management to be conceptualized as an enduring component of housing policy. The Essay identifies and evaluates a framework for the management of delinquency that is not limited to formal foreclosure law and includes other debtor-creditor laws such as bankruptcy, industry loss mitigation efforts, and third-party interventions such as delinquency housing counseling. The Essay also proposes that delinquency management be evaluated through the lens of objectives commonly used to justify public investment in home ownership and home mortgage markets: to build household wealth and economic self-sufficiency, to generate positive social-psychological states, and to develop stable neighborhoods and communities. Because those ends are not inexorably linked to ownership generally or owning a particular home, a system of delinquency management that honors these objectives should strive to provide fair, transparent, humane, and predictable strategies for home exit as well as for home retention

A Preliminary Investigation of Laser Action Assisted by Oxidized Hydrocarbons

Apparatus for generation of infrared and far infrared new laser line

Fake and Real People in Bankruptcy

This essay explores the bankruptcy system’s structural bias in favor of artificial persons—for-profit companies, non-profit enterprises, and municipalities given independent life by law—relative to humans. The favorable treatment extends to foundational issues such as the scope and timing of debt relief, the conditions to receiving any bankruptcy protections, and the flexibility to depart from the Bankruptcy Code by asserting that doing so will maximize economic value. The system’s bias also contributes to the “bad-apple-ing” of serious policy problems, running counter to other areas of law that have deemed harms like discrimination to be larger institutional phenomena rather than merely the product of individual wrongdoing. The bankruptcy system cannot fully internalize the consequences of these choices. These factors make bankruptcy a less effective partner in the broader policy project of deterring, remedying, and punishing enterprise misconduct

Other Judges\u27 Cases

After documenting the role of mediating judges in today’s federal courts, Part I considers both reform narratives and power narratives explaining their use. To add context and specificity, Part I presents case studies based on original research. While these examples have unusual features, they illustrate the breadth of potential mediating judge activities and offer more of a citable record than can be found for other cases. The first involves the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. 10 The second starts with the bankruptcy of a founder of a nationwide assisted living facility enterprise, who also solicited retirees to make “can’t miss” financial investments. Part I expressly disaggregates the cases’ routine and exceptional elements. Finally, Part I highlights the separation-of-powers considerations that the case studies invite. It also shows how the Supreme Court’s vague guidance on separation of powers yields conflicting messages about how mediating judges should go about their business. Part II considers the impact of prominent judicial accountability measures on mediating judge practices. The discussion illustrates why these systems do not operate effectively with respect to mediating judge practices. One of the biggest reasons is foundational to the mediation task: lack of a record of what transpired in behind-the-scenes negotiations. Another reason is an unduly restrictive definition of what constitutes extrajudicial activity. Part III prescribes an agenda to preserve the virtues of the mediating judge model while managing the risks. It directs the work to institutions that make rules and policy for the federal judiciary, particularly within the powerful Judicial Conference of the United States. In addition to targeted queries arising from the research this article reflects, the agenda should address big questions, including the application of separation-of-powers principles and whether judges act in a judicial capacity when they mediate