A world without bankruptcy

Congress's exercise of the bankruptcy power was far from inevitable. Indeed, for much of the nineteenth century, there was no federal bankruptcy statute at all. That we might live in a world without bankruptcy law or any similar collective procedure is not as far-fetched or as ridiculous as it might seem at first glance to those of us who are immersed in its intricacies every day. This article will take problems that have been the focus of much of the recent debate in bankruptcy law and ask how these issues would be approached if no bankruptcy law existed.