News featuring a faculty member
The Harvard Law School Bankruptcy Roundtable brings together corporate bankruptcy practitioners with bankruptcy scholars in an online venue to discuss critical issues in corporate bankruptcy. The Roundtable recently published a series on the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case, where they featured several of the more than thirty briefs filed in the case, giving readers the opportunity […]
Does the Lanham Act, which provides the national system of trademark registration and protects owners of registered marks against the use of similar marks, allow national political parties to prohibit individuals from using of their name and logo in communications? This is the key question in a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for […]
Professor Colleen Murphy has co-authored an op-ed titled “Israel, Hamas, and the Narratives of Atrocity.” The piece was published on October 25 for the Daily Nous. An excerpt follows: “Ending and preventing atrocity requires exposing and contesting the narratives that explain, rationalize, and defend the indefensible, enabling human beings to countenance and inflict suffering indifferent […]
In advance of a recent event in the Tolerance Means Dialogues discussion series that she co-founded, Professor Robin Fretwell Wilson sat down with Deseret News to discuss the importance of fostering open dialogue on tough issues, especially on college campuses. An influential family law scholar, Wilson was instrumental in the passage of the Utah Compromise […]
Lenders to bankrupt firms are increasingly insisting upon controversial contract clauses known as roll-ups, which boosts investments by moving existing debt to the front of the repayment line. This kind of contract structure prioritizes existing debt repayment, potentially limiting the resources available for lower-ranking creditors. Despite their controversial nature, bankrupt firms and judges overseeing them […]
WeWork’s recent Chapter 11 filing in New Jersey is the seventh large bankruptcy filing in the state since the previous November, as corporations increasingly choose the state as the destination to restructure their debt. New Jersey’s share of large bankruptcies nationwide has risen to 5%, partly due to the stability provided by consistent judges in […]
A dozen academics, including Professors Ralph Brubaker and Robert Lawless, are urging the United States Bankruptcy Court to abolish the two-judge panel on a south Texas bankruptcy court that has earned a reputation as a key venue for large bankruptcy cases. The letter from the legal scholars to Chief Judge Eduardo V. Rodriguez comes as […]
When student loan payments resumed in October, an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer proposed a solution to help debtors: Restore bankruptcy rights to student loans. To make his case, the author of the piece spoke to bankruptcy expert Professor Robert Lawless about the history of bankruptcy protection for student loans. Lawless explained that although federal […]
Professor Matthew Finkin submitted an amicus brief to the Massachusetts Supreme Court in Wortis v. Trustees of Tufts College, a case that is expected to define the legal content of tenure and academic freedom in American higher education. Writing for amici, Finkin argues that their brief shows that “(1) Tufts’ tenure and academic freedom policies […]
In their series on how the effects of slavery remain with us today, Reuters spoke to Professor Robert Lawless about the history of bankruptcy. The series, titled “Slavery’s Descendants” examines how slavery, the Jim Crow era, and racial discrimination put two different families (one white, one black) on very different economic paths. For part four, […]