The Law of Debtors and Creditors: Text, Cases, and Problems, Ninth Edition

BOOKMARK

Authors

Elizabeth Warren
Jay Lawrence Westbrook
John A.E. Pottow
Katherine Porter
Pamela Foohey
Angela K. Littwin

Series / Aspen Casebook Series

BOOKMARK

Book length

1012 pages

Publication Date

2026-11-05

Edition

Ninth Edition

Description

Table of contents

Preface

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Always the most teachable bankruptcy casebook, now the most current as well, The Law of Debtors and Creditors: Text, Cases, and Problems, Ninth Edition (Elizabeth Warren, Jay Lawrence Westbrook, John A.E. Pottow, Katherine Porter, Pamela Foohey, Angela K. Littwin), is the perfect vehicle for a practical, lively, and up-to-date course on consumer bankruptcy and/or corporate reorganization, including cross-border insolvency.

A leading casebook in the field, The Law of Debtors and Creditors features 39 problem sets with realistic questions bankruptcy lawyers encounter in practice. The text’s organization is practical, with assignments following the order in which consumer and business bankruptcy cases unfold. It teaches through the problems, complete with ethical difficulties and transactional strategy embedded in the fact patterns. It also challenges students with major policy and theoretical questions. The presentation is lively and colloquial. Explanatory text throughout makes bankruptcy law accessible to students and straightforward to teach. The book’s division between consumer and business bankruptcy allows professors to select the depth of coverage for each subject in designing two-, three-, or four-credit classes. A singularly comprehensive Teacher’s Manual includes a wealth of material on designing the class around the problem sets, citations to new cases and literature, and extensive suggestions for steering class discussion.

New to the Ninth Edition:

Prominent author team now includes the fresh perspective and expertise of two new authors: Pamela Foohey (University of Minnesota Law School) and Angela Littwin (University of Texas School of Law)
A refresh of the consumer materials and targeted updates to the business materials
Streamlining of nearly every assignment to reduce the reading for students
A new standalone assignment on subchapter V of chapter 11
A reconceptualized assignment about future claimants and third-party releases to focus more on mass tort bankruptcies
New cases covering consumer, business, and cross-border insolvency issues, including Fulton, Purdue, and Serta
A few new and updated problems

Professors and students will benefit from:

Separation of consumer bankruptcy and business bankruptcy—professors can select the depth of coverage for each subject
Functional organization—as a consumer and business bankruptcy case would unfold
Organization that presents consumer materials first so that students can master key bankruptcy concepts in simpler situations before encountering them in complex business contexts
Lively explanatory text—makes bankruptcy law accessible to students, straightforward to teach, and fun for everyone
Engagement with current events and economic trends
Incorporation of fresh data about bankruptcy trends and filers
39 problem sets that combine doctrinal, transactional, and theoretical issues and feature realistic questions lawyers consider in bankruptcy practice
Substantial discussion of the ethical questions that arise in bankruptcy practice, including ethical issues in the problem sets
Chapters specifically devoted to bankruptcy theory (consumer and business), to cross-border insolvencies, and to important ethics issues in consumer and business bankruptcy
An excellent Teacher’s Manual that is particularly helpful to newer professors, and for current adopters, specifies exactly what has changed from the prior edition

Table of Contents

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

Contents
Preface
Preface to the Ninth Edition: A Note to Teachers
Acknowledgments
Special Notice

PART I
INTRODUCTION TO DEBTOR- CREDITOR LAW
Assignment 1. Fighting over Money
Assignment 2. Collecting from Consumer Debtors
PART II
CONSUMER BANKRUPTCY
Section 1: The Beginning
Assignment 3. The Bankruptcy Estate and the
Automatic Stay
Section 2: Chapter 7 Liquidation
Assignment 4. Property Exempt from Seizure
Assignment 5. Property Exemptions II
Assignment 6. Claims and Distributions
Assignment 7. Priority Among Unsecured Creditors
Assignment 8. Discharge
Assignment 9. The Debtor’s Position After Bankruptcy
Section 3: Chapter 13 Repayment
Assignment 10. Secured Creditors in Chapter 13
Assignment 11. Unsecured Creditors in Chapter 13
Section 4: The Consumer Bankruptcy System
Assignment 12. The Means Test
Assignment 13. Chapter Choice
Assignment 14. Policy and Practice
PART III
BUSINESS BANKRUPTCY: FOUNDATIONS
Section 1: Introduction
Assignment 15. Recovering from Business Debtors
Assignment 16. Reorganizing Businesses
Section 2: Operating in Chapter 11
Assignment 17. Getting Started
Assignment 18. Running the Business
Assignment 19. Financing the Reorganization
Section 3: Reshaping the Estate
Assignment 20. Avoiding Liens
Assignment 21. Preferences I
Assignment 22. Preferences II
Assignment 23. Fraudulent Conveyances I
Assignment 24. Fraudulent Conveyances II
Assignment 25. Executory Contracts I
Assignment 26. Executory Contracts II
PART IV
BUSINESS BANKRUPTCY: PLANS AND BEYOND
Section 1: Traditional Chapter 11
Assignment 27. Negotiating and Confirming the Plan
Assignment 28. Protections for Unsecured Creditors
Assignment 29. Cramming Down Secured Creditors
Assignment 30. Subchapter V Cases
Section 2: New Chapter 11
Assignment 31. Sales and Beyond I
Assignment 32. Sales and Beyond II
Section 3: Governance and Practice in Chapter 11
Assignment 33. Governance in Chapter 11
Assignment 34. Practicing in Chapter 11
Section 4: The Finality of Chapter 11
Assignment 35. Special Parties and the Outer Limits
of Bankruptcy
PART V
FUNCTIONS AND BOUNDARIES
Assignment 36. Domestic Jurisdiction
Assignment 37. Cross- Border Insolvencies
Assignment 38. Beyond Chapter 11
Assignment 39. Business Bankruptcy Theory

Appendix A Selected Federal Consumer
Protection Statutes
Appendix B Secured Credit Basics
Table of Cases
Table of Statutes and Regulations
Index

Preface

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About the authors

Elizabeth Warren

Harvard University (Emeritus)

Elizabeth Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law Emeritus at Harvard University and the senior United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. While in teaching, she twice won the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence at Harvard Law School, as well as other teaching prizes at the University of Houston, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania. She has written ten books and more than a hundred scholarly articles dealing with credit and economic stress. Warren has been a principal investigator on empirical studies funded by the National Science Foundation and more than a dozen private foundations. Warren served as Chief Adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. She also served as Vice-President of the American Law Institute, and she has been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. During the financial crisis, Warren was the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and she later served as Adviser to the President and Special Adviser to the Secretary of the Treasury to set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Jay Lawrence Westbrook

University of Texas

Jay Lawrence Westbrook is the Benno C. Schmidt Chair of Business Law at The University of Texas at Austin School of Law. One of the nation's most distinguished scholars in the field of bankruptcy, he has been a pioneer in this area in two respects: empirical research and international comparative studies. Professor Westbrook also teaches and writes in commercial law and international business litigation. He practiced in all these areas for more than a decade with Surrey & Morse (now part of Jones Day) in Washington, D.C., where he was a partner, before joining the faculty in 1980.

He is co-author of The Law of Debtors and Creditors (Aspen Publishing, 7th ed., 2014), As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America (Oxford, 1989), The Fragile Middle Class (Yale, 2000), and A Global View of Business Insolvency Systems (Martinus Nijhoff, 2010). He has been Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School and the University of London, and is a member of the American Law Institute, the National Bankruptcy Conference, and the American College of Bankruptcy.

He serves as a consultant to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He was the United States Reporter for the ALI's Transnational Insolvency Project and co-head of the United States delegation to the UN (UNCITRAL) conference on cross-border insolvency. He is an emeritus director of the International Insolvency Institute and a director and former President of the International Academy of Commercial and Consumer Law. He has twice been named the Outstanding Teacher at The University of Texas School of Law.

John A. E. Pottow

University of Michigan

John A. E. Pottow is an internationally recognized expert in the field of bankruptcy and commercial law. His award-winning scholarship concentrates on the issues involved in the regulation of cross-border insolvencies as well as consumer financial distress. He has testified before Congress and argued bankruptcy cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including his successful pro bono representation of the respondent in Executive Benefits Insurance Agency v. Arkison (2014).

Prior to joining the Michigan faculty in 2003, he worked at several bankruptcy firms, including Weil, Gotshal & Manges of New York and the former Hill & Barlow of Boston. His practice focused on debtor representation in complex Chapter 11 restructurings. He is a member of the International Insolvency Institute and has been an NGO observer for UNCITRAL Working Groups on Arbitration and Insolvency.

In 2005, he was presented the L. Hart Wright Award for Excellence in Teaching and, in 2012, received a pro bono award from the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan.

Katherine Porter

University of California, Irvine

Professor Katherine Porter has been recognized for both her academic and service work, including selection as one of the Top 100 Lawyers in California in 2012 and receipt of the Champion of Consumer Rights Award from the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys.

In 2012, Professor Porter was appointed by California Attorney General Kamala Harris to be the states independent monitor of banks in a nationwide $25 billion mortgage settlement. She has been a principal investigator in several original empirical projects on consumer bankruptcy and has testified before Congress on consumer credit issues.

Professor Porter is a co-author of The Law of Debtors and Creditors (Aspen Publishing 2014) and the editor of Broke: How Debt Bankrupts the Middle Class (Stanford Press 2012). She previously was on the faculty at the University of Iowa College of Law and has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and UC Berkeley Law.

Pamela Foohey

Pamela Foohey is the Curtis Bradbury Kellar Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. Specializing in bankruptcy, commercial law, consumer finance, and business law, Foohey’s scholarship primarily involves empirical studies of bankruptcy and related parts of the legal system. She presently is a co-investigator on the Consumer Bankruptcy Law Project, a long-term research project studying persons who file bankruptcy. Data from this research project serve as the basis of her co-authored book Debt’s Grip: Risk and Consumer Bankruptcy, University of California Press (2025). Her work in business bankruptcy focuses on nonprofit entities. Data from this project are included in her book Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive, University of Chicago Press (2026). Leading journals publishing her work include Virginia Law Review, Southern California Law Review, Boston College Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review and Law & Contemporary Problems, among others.

Foohey is a member of the American College of Bankruptcy, the American College of Consumer Financial Services Lawyers, and the American Law Institute. She has assisted members of Congress and federal and state agencies in the areas of bankruptcy and consumer credit. She has also provided expert media commentary for high profile publications such as The New York Times, Financial Times and The Washington Post, in addition to Bloomberg and National Public Radio.

Angela K. Littwin

The University of Texas at Austin School of Law

Angela Littwin is the Charles Sapp Chair in Banking, Financial, Commercial & Corporate Law at the University of Texas, Austin. She studies bankruptcy, consumer, and commercial law from an empirical perspective. She teaches courses in the areas of bankruptcy, commercial and consumer financial law.

Littwin coined the term “coerced debt” to describe debt generated by domestic violence and recently completed a major research project on it, funded by the National Science Foundation. She has published in leading journals such as the Texas Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, California Law Review, American Bankruptcy Law Journal, and peer-reviewed journals focused on domestic violence.

Littwin is a member of the American College of Bankruptcy and has testified several times before the Texas Senate and House of Representatives. She regularly provides expertise to groups across the country who are developing and passing laws addressing coerced debt. She has provided expert commentary for news outlets ranging from U.S.A. Today to National Public Radio.

Product Information

Edition

Ninth Edition

Publication date

2026-11-05

2026

Pages

1012

Print + eBook

9798889066217

eBook

9798889066224

LLPOD

9798904411343

Subject

Bankruptcy and Debtor/Creditor Law

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