Bankruptcy’s Equity Canon
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By Jared Mayer (Law Clerk, Supreme Court of New Jersey)

Jared Mayer

The Bankruptcy Code constrains bankruptcy courts’ equitable powers, yet bankruptcy courts have often used those powers in ways that go beyond the Code’s text. This conflict creates tensions between various bankruptcy goals. The Code provides ex ante certainty and contains substantive policy choices, which equity threatens to compromise by allowing bankruptcy judges to override the text. Without equity, however, bankruptcy proceedings would provide parties with occasions to gain positional advantages in bankruptcy, thereby allowing them to unilaterally capture value at those other parties’ expense.

Drawing on insights from equity theory, this Essay identifies a role that equity can play to balance these interests. This Essay proposes an “equity canon” for bankruptcy courts to use when interpreting the Bankruptcy Code: judges should interpret unclear provisions by disregarding interpretations that would lead to inequitable outcomes. Equity theorists have illuminated equity’s role in combating opportunistic evasions of the law that cannot be identified and prevented ex ante. This is particularly important in bankruptcy. While bankruptcy proceedings are designed to maximize the estate’s value, parties nonetheless have incentives to capture value for themselves. Bankruptcy courts can use the equity canon to combat parties’ opportunistic exploitation of the Code while respecting the Code’s primacy.

The full Essay is available here.

Nothing herein reflects the views of the Supreme Court of New Jersey or the New Jersey Judiciary.

Reports of Equity’s Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated
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By Adam J. Levitin, Georgetown University Law Center

Mark Berman is veryLevitin Headshot kind to take notice of my article in his recent analysis of Law v. Siegel, posted on the HLS Bankruptcy Roundtable, here.  We agree on a great deal about the case and scope of equity practice.  A question persists about the scope of Law v. Siegel, though, and what it is proscribing when it reiterates the view that “whatever equitable powers remain in the bankruptcy courts must and can only be exercised within the confines of the Bankruptcy Code.”  The question, then, is which non-Code practices are properly characterized as “equity”.  My own view is that very little of modern bankruptcy practice is in fact “equity.”

Law v. Siegel, for example, should not affect such important non-Code practices as judicial interpretation of Bankruptcy Code statutory terms or judicially-created doctrines like substantial consolidation, which are sometimes mistakenly listed among the bankruptcy court’s “equitable powers”.  As I wrote earlier, though, because such practices are interstitial and formed as broad principles, they are, in my view, better understood as part of a federal common law of bankruptcy, and distinguished from equitable powers, which are based on case-by-case specifics, as in Law v. Siegel.  As interstitial powers, these lie outside any widening or narrowing of bankruptcy court’s equitable powers.

Moreover, the uncertainties about when actual equitable practices contradict statutes will continue.  In cases of clear contradiction, the interpretive result will be easy. But cases where it is unclear whether a conflict truly exists will continue to invite negotiation between and among the parties because of the cost and uncertainty of litigation.  Despite the Supreme Court’s best efforts, consideration of the equities will likely remain a part of our bankruptcy system.

For a fuller treatment of this subject, please continue here.

‘Wither’ the Equity Powers of the Bankruptcy Court
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Author: Mark N. Berman, Nixon Peabody LLP

The United StaMark Bermantes Supreme Court’s Law v. Siegel decision has been explained away as an understandable limitation of a bankruptcy court’s use of Bankruptcy Code Section 105(a)’s expansive authority based on conventional techniques of statutory construction. Bankruptcy courts will not be able to use Section 105(a) to authorize an order that is otherwise prohibited by another section of the Bankruptcy Code.  However, it is also possible to read the decision as yet another stop on the road to limiting the ability of the bankruptcy courts to ‘do equity.’

Revisiting Professor Levitin’s 2006 law review article entitled Toward a Federal Common Law of Bankruptcy: Judicial Lawmaking in a Statutory Regime, 80 Am. Bankr. L.J. 1-87 (2006), I posit that the equity jurisdiction of the bankruptcy courts has already been statutorily restricted and the United States Supreme Court has made it clear that everyone should be prepared for further limitation of what has historically been its power. The Supreme Court’s warning is repeated in this latest decision.

The full alert is available here.

[Editor: The full text of Professor Adam Levitin’s noted article, Toward a Federal Common Law of Bankruptcy: Judicial Lawmaking in a Statutory Regime, can be found here.]