Table of Contents

Figures and Tables    
Abbreviations  

1. Historical Institutionalism and the Recursivity of Law    

Part One: 1920s–1950s

2. Corporate Restructuring as a Bondholder Remedy    
3. Enshrining a Bondholder Remedy in Federal Legislation    
4. Constitutional References and Changing Conceptions of Federalism: 1934–1937    
5. Efforts to Repeal the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act: 1938–1953   

Part Two: 1970s–2000s

6. New Lenders, New Forms of Lending, and Stalled Bankruptcy Reforms: 1970s–1980s    
7. Purposive Interpretation and Proactive Judging: 1980s–1990s    
8. Judicial Sanction of "Tactical Devices"    
9. Formalizing a Modern "Debtor-in-Possession" Restructuring Narrative    
10. Conclusion    

Appendices    
Notes  

About the Author

Virginia Torrie is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Banking and Finance Law Review.

Reviews

"With impressive scholarship, Reinventing Bankruptcy Law provides an excellent, accessible short history of the CCAA. Virginia Torrie draws upon political science and socio-legal theory to explore why a piece of federal restructuring legislation, hardly used in its enactment during the Depression, became a staple of restructuring practice in the 1980s and onwards. Torrie's account is comprehensive, well framed, and well evidenced."
--Adrian Walters, Ralph L. Brill Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Institute of Technology
"Real time" litigation under the CCAA does not permit most practitioners to engage in much historical analysis. In a breakthrough book based on detailed research and novel analysis, Dr. Virginia Torrie offers the busy practitioner insight into the history of the CCAA, including the evolution of filling "gaps" and advancing the broader public interest. Reinventing Bankruptcy Law is bound to be persuasive to any court."--Vern W. DaRe, Fogler, Rubinoff LLP and co-author of Debt Restructuring: Principles and Practice and Honsberger's Bankruptcy in Canada
"Most sophisticated American restructuring attorneys know that the CCAA is "like" chapter 11, but many of us know little more than that. Professor Torrie's book explains why and how the CCAA grew to mirror chapter 11, and why this new understanding of the CCAA may have little to do with the actual intent of the drafters back in the 1930s. For any American reader who wants to really understand the CCAA, and its modern-day relation to chapter 11, this is a must read book."--Stephen J. Lubben, Harvey Washington Wiley Chair in Corporate Governance & Business Ethics, Seton Hall University School of Law
"Torrie has written a scholarly, impressively researched, and thought-provoking analysis of Canada's foremost insolvency legislation. In the course of so doing she has provided her readers with a most interesting revelation of its history."--Tim Kennish, Oslin, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, Canadian Business History Association