This book is intended for a three credit law school course covering the fundamentals of bankruptcy law and practice. Students should recognize that this is a “Code” class, and that the starting place for solving most bankruptcy problems is the Bankruptcy Code itself. Students should read the materials and work through the problems by direct reference to the provisions of the Bankruptcy Code. Bankruptcy lawyers simply must be comfortable with the Code in order to be effective.
The book contains many cases interpreting the Bankruptcy Code. The cases have been stripped to the essentials to minimize reading. Most cross-citations have been deleted. Issues discussed in the cases that are not relevant to the point for which the case is included in the materials have been stricken. Bolding has been added to important language the students should focus on. The practitioner, of course, should always read full cases and not rely on the edited versions in this book or on headnotes or other secondary sources. This book contains the bones of the case, with flesh left only where essential to understanding the court’s reasoning on the particular issue of relevance to the material in the book.
Much of the learning will come through working with the problems. Many students have developed the bad practice of reading the questions without trying to solve them. Don’t do that. You need to try to solve the problems by reading and working through the statute. The best way to learn and be comfortable with using the statutory language is to work through the statute to solve the problems.
Some of the problems contain case references. I do not expect my students to read the cases that are merely cited in the problems, and not reprinted in the book. I discuss some of these cases with the class when covering the problems. Students interested in the problems are always free to read the cases for greater understanding, as time permits.
Gregory Germain, Bankruptcy Law and Practice, Published by CALI eLangdell Press. Copyright CALI 2016. Available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 License. CALI® and eLangdell® are United States federally registered trademarks owned by the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction. The cover art design is a copyrighted work of CALI, all rights reserved. The CALI graphical logo is a trademark and may not be used without permission. Should you create derivative works based on the text of this book or other Creative Commons materials therein, you may not use this book’s cover art and the aforementioned logos, or any derivative thereof, to imply endorsement or otherwise without written permission from CALI.
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Gregory Germain is a professor at Syracuse University College of Law where he teaches courses in Contracts, Commercial Transactions, Corporations, Taxation and of course Bankruptcy Law. He also runs a pro bono bankruptcy program for first year law students, and a bankruptcy clinic for upper division students. The clinic represents indigent individuals in bankruptcy cases.
Professor Germain received his JD Degree Magna Cum Laude from the University of California Hastings College of Law, practiced law for 15 years in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and then obtained his LLM in Tax from the University of Florida. Following tax school, he worked as an attorney advisor for the Honorable Renato Beghe of the United States Tax Court before beginning his teaching career at Syracuse University College of Law.
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