What Should Judges Do in Chapter 11
This piece contends that doctrinal corporate bankruptcy reforms, however wise, will be incomplete without deeper consideration of the role of various institutional actors, particularly judges and courts. The bankruptcy system sends mixed messages to judges. Drafters of the 1978 Bankruptcy Code exhorted judges to be no more or less than umpires of discrete disputes raised by the parties. Today's bankruptcy system, however, imposes greater, and conflicting, expectations: to promote quick resolution of disputes through encouraging party settlement, but also to exercise independent oversight even if no party in interest objects - sometimes without a clear sense of how the court should gather the information to make such a judgment. These tensions are not unique to bankruptcy; they also arise in civil actions, both simple and complex, in federal district courts. Managing them, however, is essential to changing the dynamics of modern corporate bankruptcy and, therefore, to the project of reform.
Bargaining Bankrupt: A Relational Theory of Contract in Bankruptcy
This Article studies the growing use of contract in bankruptcy. Sophisticated 
“distress” investors (for example, hedge funds and private equity funds) 
increasingly enter into contracts amongst themselves and corporate debtors during 
bankruptcy in order to evade “mandatory” rules on the priority of distributions, 
thus preferring themselves at the expense of other stakeholders (for 
example, employees of the corporate debtor). Bankruptcy courts that supervise 
these cases struggle with these priority-shifting contracts. They are asked to approve 
them, but have little theoretical or doctrinal guidance on how to assess 
them. 
 
This Article develops a “relational” framework to explore this shift toward 
contract in bankruptcy. Relationalism seeks to understand power dynamics, and 
preferences for formal and informal promissory mechanisms in private ordering. 
Distress investors, bankruptcy professionals (lawyers), and judges in large cases 
form a classic relationalist environment. They are a community of repeat players 
with their own norms and preferences for formal and informal promissory exchange. 
Their contracting practices can affect the hundreds (sometimes 
thousands) of stakeholders in a large corporate debtor. 
 
At the same time, there are growing calls to amend the Bankruptcy Code. 
Congress, however, has botched recent efforts to do so. Contract may be a better 
vehicle for institutional adjustment than Congress—if it is perceived as legitimate. 
A relationalist framework would help sort legitimate from illegitimate contracts 
in bankruptcy, thus improving our understanding of the system and its 
operation.
The Area of Freedom, Security and Justice ten years on: Successes and future challenges under the Stockholm Programme. CEPS Paperbacks. June 2010
This book celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) by bringing together the views of key practitioners and policy-makers who have played an outstanding role in thinking about and shaping EU policies on freedom, security and justice. 
 
Ten years ago, the member states transferred competences to the EU for law and policy-making in the fields of immigration, asylum and border controls, and began the transfer process for criminal justice and policing. This decade of European cooperation on AFSJ policies has experienced very dynamic convergence, the enactment of a large body of European law and the setting-up of numerous EU agencies working in these domains. Such dynamism in policy-making has not been without challenges and vulnerabilities, however. As this collective volume shows, the main dilemmas that lie ahead relate to an effective (while more plural) institutional framework under the Treaty of Lisbon, stronger judicial scrutiny through a greater role for national courts and the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, better mechanisms for evaluating and monitoring the implementation of EU AFSJ law and a more solid fundamental rights strategy. The contributions in this volume address the progress achieved so far in these policy areas, identify the challenges for future European cooperation in the AFSJ and put forward possible paths for making more progress in the next generation of the EU’s AFSJ.