Congressional Testimony on H.R. 2533: 'The Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Venue Reform Act of 2011'

Abstract

This testimony is from a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law on reforming the venue laws applicable to chapter 11 bankruptcy cases. This brief testimony adds three distinctive elements to the scholarly debates about corporate bankruptcy venue that will be developed in future scholarship. First, the current bankruptcy venue laws are an aberration from federal venue principles. Second, place of incorporation - a criterion deemed quite important to defenders of current chapter 11 venue laws - bears little or no weight in forum selection by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation, another complex litigation setting. Third, the procedural justice literature offers important insights about what is at stake when corporate reorganizations routinely take place far away from the people deeply affected by them.