| Professor David
Skeel
Resident Scholar Final
Report
Summer & Fall,
2006
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I had the privilege of serving as
ABI Robert M. Zinman Scholar
in Residence in the summer and early fall of 2006. My principal
activities consisted of responding to media inquiries, writing for
ABI periodicals, editing an
ABI treatise, taping podcast
interviews with prominent figures in the bankruptcy world, and writing
materials for and making presentations at ABI conferences.
Media
My tenure as Resident Scholar began a
little over six months after the full implementation of the Bankruptcy
Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005
(“BAPCPA”) on October 17, 2005. As a result, I did not
receive nearly so many media inquiries as Nathalie Martin, the silver
tongued scholar who served as Resident Scholar when BAPCPA first went
into effect, but I nevertheless received numerous inquiries from
reporters and was quoted in a number of different newspapers. I
also appeared on cable television– a segment of the Pennsylvania
legal talk show Law Journal Television hosted by Christopher
Naughton. The TV show, like a large percentage of the media
inquiries, concerned the impact of BAPCPA.
Writing and Editing
In addition to fielding media inquiries,
I also wrote short commentary pieces on a variety of topics, including
an article on the Marrama v. Citizens Bank case (the Supreme
Court case concerning a debtor’s claim that he had an absolute
right to convert from chapter 7 to chapter 13) for ABI Journal; a commentary for
ABI/Dow Jones on the
increasing use by corporate debtors of state law alternatives to chapter
11, and several short pieces for the Bankruptcy Update newsletter
on ABI’s
website.
My principal editing (really,
commenting) project was spending many pleasant hours reading the second
edition of Jack Ayer and Michael Bernstein’s terrific treatise
Bankruptcy in Practice and offering a number of minor comments
and suggestions.
ABIConferences
I spoke at and attended two
ABI Regional conferences in
the summer of 2006. At the Northeast Bankruptcy Conference
in Newport,
Rhode Island, I spoke with
Judges Feeney and Queenan about the new value exception to absolute
priority on the “Dockside Chat” panel. At the
Central States Bankruptcy Workshop in Traverse City, Michigan, I spoke on a plenary panel
called “How Reformed is the Reformation?” about the effects
of
BAPCPA.
In October, I attended the Bankruptcy
2006: Views from the Bench at Georgetown Law Center on the first year of
BAPCPA. I also edited some of the introductory material used by
panel moderators in their initial remarks.
ABI Podcasts
Perhaps my favorite responsibility of
all was interviewing prominent bankruptcy figures as part of the
ABI’s podcast
series. During my tenure (and after), I conducted podcast
interviews with Bill Schorling, Harvey Miller, Judge Thomas Ambro, Judge
Marjorie Rendell, Henry Sommer, Judge Bruce Markell, Nell Hennessy, Eric
Brunstad, Martin Bienenstock, and Don Bernstein.
David A. Skeel, Jr.
S. Samuel Arsht Professor of
Corporate Law
University of Pennsylvania Law School
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