The Supreme Court ruled in June on the case of Keathley v. Buddy Ayres Construction, unanimously held that courts should look to the totality of the circumstances when determining whether an omission of a claim in the bankruptcy context was inadvertent or mistaken for purposes of the judicial estoppel doctrine. Professor Robert Lawless, who joined an amicus brief on the case, joined host Bill Rochelle on the American Bankruptcy Institute Podcast to discuss the facts of the case, the decision, and how courts are likely to proceed moving forward.

Copyright termination is a process by which copyright holders may terminate a grant—or transfer—of their rights. In a recent Eleventh Circuit case, judges ruled that termination rights are retained by an estate even after discharge, a decision that presents some problems. Rochelle’s Daily Wire, a publication of the American Bankruptcy Institute, quoted Professor Robert Lawless on this topic, including his suggestion of how courts may create a more useful mechanism for future cases.

The requirement that individuals withdraw required minimum distribution amounts, as specified in the SECURE 2.0 Act, requires women to withdraw more than their
gender-specific life expectancy would otherwise require. This is the conclusion of Professor Richard Kaplan in a new article published in the Pittsburgh Tax Review. The paper was originally presented at an ABA-sponsored conference on revealing and addressing hidden gender bias in tax law and policy.

When a law is inconsistent, further guidance should come from Congress, courts, and administrative agencies to create clarity. In her recent article, Professor Sarah Lawsky examines via a programming language framework an example of a tax statute that mandates inconsistent outcomes for the same set of facts and shows how that inconsistency has been addressed by the Treasury and the IRS. Her article was also the subject of a TaxProfBlog article, which you can read online.

The Department of Labor recently announced it would no longer prioritize investigations and enforcement actions against employee stock ownership plans (ESOP). The Capitol Forum account of this policy change notes the regulatory concerns this announcement raises and quotes Professor Sean Anderson extensively. “Some actors in the ESOP industry will be incentivized to be less careful and more aggressive about valuation and fiduciary decision making,” he said.

Direct File, a program that allows some taxpayers to file federal income tax returns with the United States government online for free, is an extraordinary accomplishment, Professor Sarah Lawsky writes in a new article published in the Pittsburgh Tax Review. Examining the computer code underlying Direct File, Lawsky finds choices that make “the application of the law and various administrative choices more transparent even to those who are not comfortable reading computer code.”

A new co-authored essay from Professors Jennifer Robbennolt and Verity Winship will be published in the FSU Business Review, as part of the 2026 Symposium on Behavioral Perspectives on Corporate Law. The essay is titled “From Tweets to Testimony: A Case Study of Apologies After the FTX Collapse,” and the abstract follows:

Professor Ralph Brubaker published a new article on SSRN, titled “The Erie Doctrine, Code Common Law, and Choice-of-Law Rules in Bankruptcy.” The article was also featured in the Harvard Law School Bankruptcy Roundtable.

Professor Sarah Lawsky, along with co-author Leandra Lederman, published the paper “Constructing Deductions” on SSRN.com. The abstract follows:

After struggling financially for years and failing to secure a government bailout, Spirit Airlines announced that it would begin the process of shutting down in early May. Investors were strongly opposed to the government bailout, especially those that had made Spirit debtor-in-possession loans. Such loans have high interest rates, and the investors who own them are paid back before other creditors. The investors also have the right to object to changes, including new loans, that could hurt their interests.