SPECIAL ISSUE CALL FOR PAPERS
Rescuing Organizations in Financial Distress
The American Business Law Journal (ABLJ) is seeking manuscripts for a special issue on “Rescuing Organizations in Financial Distress.”
Organizations around the globe, both private businesses and public entities, are currently experiencing extraordinary financial pressure and distress. A panoply of internal and external causal factors are contributing to the financial distress. While some organizations can overcome their financial predicament through continued operations, others require legal mechanisms to facilitate a path to rescue. The failure of a private business or the collapse of a public organization has a cascading impact on a host of stakeholders and interests, leading to significant detrimental outcomes well beyond the organization in financial distress. The special issue explores what businesses, regulators, lawmakers, and attorneys should do to provide effective rescue regimes and tools for organizations in financial distress.
The “Rescuing Organizations in Financial Distress” special issue will take a broad perspective. Submissions may cover a wide variety of topics addressing insolvency and bankruptcy law, financial law, government bailouts and other areas of law, business and policy that impact the rescue of an organization. Paper topics may include but are not limited to:
- Corporate governance and its role in preventing financial distress.
- Ethical considerations in rescuing failing organizations.
- Technological innovations and their impact on insolvency law.
- Alternative dispute resolution mechanisms in insolvency proceedings.
- Rescuing small and medium enterprises in financial distress.
- The future of third-party releases and impact on effective rescue.
- Non-bankruptcy law rescue tools and regimes.
- What is (or should be) the policy orientation of rescue law?
- The Small Business Reorganization Act of 2019 and Subchapter V: analysis, critique and lessons for other rescue regimes.
- The government's role in rescue of private businesses, i.e. bankruptcy or bailouts?
- Rescuing healthcare organizations in financial distress and the policy implications such as on access to healthcare.
- Rescue tools, such as Chapter 9 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, for municipalities.
- Cross-border insolvencies, such as under Chapter 15 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.
- Role of judges in effective rescues.
- Economic programs related to loan repayment or essential industry rescue.
- The role of digital assets in organizational rescue efforts.
- The role of private equity in rescue.
- Comparative work on insolvency and bankruptcy law, rooted at least in part on U.S. law.
- Analysis and lessons from emerging jurisdictions and the development of their rescue regimes.
- The future of insolvency law in the digital age.
Submissions incorporating interdisciplinary approaches and/or comparative and international law are welcome, as are submissions from researchers based outside of North America. It is expected that four papers will be accepted for the special issue; papers not accepted may be resubmitted to the ABLJ for publication outside of the special issue.
Papers submitted for consideration must conform to The Bluebook (21st Edition). Article submissions should be between 12,000 and 20,000 words in length (inclusive of footnotes). Essay submissions should be between 7,000 and 10,000 words in length (inclusive of footnotes).
Articles and essays selected for the special issue will be published in Issue 4, Volume 62 (2025), of the ABLJ. Submissions must be received by February 3, 2025, for consideration. Submissions should be made to abljsubmission@alsb.org. Authors will be notified of their acceptance by February 28, 2025.
Questions regarding this process and the special issue may be directed to: Professor Rob Landry, Editor-in-Chief, at rlandry@jsu.edu, or Professor Nizan Geslevich Packin, Special Issue Guest Editor, at Nizan.packin@baruch.cunny.edu.