The law of insolvency, 2nd edn. Ian F Fletcher, London Sweet & Maxwell, 1996 ISBN 0421511400
✍ Scribed by Harry Rajak
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1997
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 251 KB
- Volume
- 6
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1180-0518
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Insolvency (or bankruptcy) has long been established in the United States as a subject fit for study at law school. In the United Kingdom, however, only in the past decade or so have courses in corporate and personal insolvency begun to appear in the law degree curriculum. Why is there a distinction between two countries where legal education and legal practice possess many similarities? First, whereas in the United States, lawyers have for a long time successfully trawled the lucrative waters of bankruptcy practice, in the United Kingdom it has been accountants rather than lawyers who have dominated this practice. Secondly, and again until only recently, legal education in the United Kingdom has been characterised by a deep (and some might think intellectually unjustifiable) split between the 'academic' and 'practical' courses, with insolvency being seen as very much the latter and, therefore, not suitable for the former. There has been little or no pressure from the practising profession for any academic treatment of insolvency, and the teaching profession, in general, thought no more about it.
Thirdly, the structure of insolvency in the United Kingdom has been divided between insolvency as it affects companies registered under the Companies Act 1985 (corporate insolvency) and insolvency as it affects individuals (personal bankruptcy). Although 'insolvency' and 'bankruptcy' are synonymous in describing a debtor in a state of being unable to discharge all debts in full, in the United Kingdom these terms have been used to denote what have