Unjust Debts - by Melissa B Jacoby (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A groundbreaking look at the hidden role of bankruptcy in perpetuating inequality in America, from an expert in the field"--

Book Synopsis

Named one of the Best Summer Books in Economics by the Financial Times

A groundbreaking look at the hidden role of bankruptcy in perpetuating inequality in America, from an expert in the field

"Unjust Debts throws open the doors and windows to the bankruptcy system so readers can see for themselves how this law works and doesn't work for the real people it so profoundly affects."
-Beth Macy, New York Times bestselling author of Dopesick and Raising Lazarus

Bankruptcy is the busiest federal court in America. In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially.

In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and class inequality in America. When cities go bankrupt, for example, police unions enjoy added leverage while police brutality victims are denied a seat at the negotiating table; the system is more forgiving of civil rights abuses than of the parking tickets disproportionately distributed in African American neighborhoods. Across a broad range of crucial issues, Unjust Debts reveals the hidden mechanisms by which bankruptcy impacts everything from sexual harassment to health care, police violence to employment discrimination, and the opioid crisis to gun violence.

In the tradition of Matthew Desmond's groundbreaking Evicted, Unjust Debts is a riveting and original work of accessible scholarship with huge implications for ordinary people and will set the terms of debate for this vital subject.

Review Quotes

Praise for Unjust Debts:
"Unjust Debts is an important book. Written to welcome all readers into the world of bankruptcy, the book chronicles the evolution of one of the most important legal institutions in our market-based democracy."
-Harvard Law Review

"[Unjust Debts] goes a long way towards demystifying the web of complexity in personal and business bankruptcy."
--TLS

"In this compelling book Jacoby . . . shows how the bankruptcy code favours fake people, also known as corporations, over real people, especially relatively disadvantaged ones. . . . This is a highly disturbing account."
--Financial Times

"Unjust Debts synthesizes three decades of research into the system's frustrating contradictions, helpfully summarizes the crux of the issue as bankruptcy's 'structural bias in favor of artificial persons'--i.e., corporations, nonprofits, and constructed entities explicitly designed to shield rich and powerful owners from the consequences of their misdeeds."
The American Prospect

"Jacoby's assured prose brings extraordinary clarity to an intentionally opaque and labyrinthine system. It's an eye-opening look at the laws that undergird American inequality."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"An exposéeacute; of the racial, class, and corporate biases in the U.S. bankruptcy system. . . . [Unjust Debts] is deserving of wide readership."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Melissa Jacoby's Unjust Debts takes on the gross inequality that victims face every day in mass tort cases. If we can't grasp the magnitude of the problem, we'll never be able to fix it. The American bankruptcy system is fundamentally broken and every policymaker in America should be reading this book."
--Ryan Hampton, addiction recovery advocate and bestselling author of American Fix and Unsettled

"What is the foundation upon which inequality in America is built? We have come to understand so much of that hidden architecture in recent years--and now, in Unjust Debts, Melissa Jacoby brilliantly unearths one of the largest, and least-understood building blocks."
--Michael Eric Dyson, Vanderbilt University, and New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop

"A serious subject made accessible through great storytelling: Unjust Debts by Melissa Jacoby is a must-read that brings bankruptcy law to life. A companion to The Whiteness of Wealth and The Color of Law, Jacoby shows how a color-blind statute operates in a world where bankruptcy filers bring their racial identities into bankruptcy court. Unjust Debts also demonstrates how corporations are winners even in court and provides a path to reform."
--Dorothy A. Brown, Georgetown University, and bestselling author of The Whiteness of Wealth

"A constitutional grant of second chances to overburdened people has transformed into a corporate escape hatch for shocking acts of misconduct, and Melissa Jacoby painstakingly documents that transformation. The fight to reverse the terrible slide of bankruptcy into a tool for business manipulation begins with you reading this book."
--David Dayen, journalist and author of Monopolized

"Bankruptcy--which touches millions of Americans--is supposed to be society's safety valve for hard times. Instead,

About the Author

Melissa B. Jacoby is the Graham Kenan Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A frequent commentator on bankruptcy and debt in national media outlets, she has published over fifty articles, book chapters, and op-eds. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York. Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal (The New Press) is her first book. Find her at mbjacoby.org.