About

Bruce A. Markell was appointed the Professor of Bankruptcy Law and Practice at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in 2015. Prior to this appointment, he served as the Jeffrey A. Stoops Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law from 2013 to 2015. He has extensive experience in bankruptcy and business law, having practiced in Los Angeles for ten years, where he was a partner at Sidley & Austin, and served as a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Nevada since 2004. He clerked for then-judge Anthony M. Kennedy on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit after law school. Markell has also been a law professor for fourteen years and has held visiting professorships at institutions including Peking University School of Law in Beijing and Harvard Law School. His scholarly work includes numerous articles on bankruptcy and commercial law, and he is a co-author of four law school casebooks. He contributes to Collier on Bankruptcy and is a member of its editorial advisory board. Markell is a conferee of the National Bankruptcy Conference, a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a charter member of the International Insolvency Institute, and a member of the American Law Institute. He also consults with the International Monetary Fund on insolvency-related issues and was the primary drafter of Kosovo’s current bankruptcy law. His areas of expertise include commercial law, contracts, bankruptcy, secured transactions, and cross-border aspects of bankruptcy.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Business
• Computer Science
• Epistemology
• Philosophy
• Economics
• Accounting
• Law and economics
• Management

Selected publications

• Amicus Brief on Nonconsensual Nondebtor Releases in Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Reorganizations (Harrington v. Purdue Pharma)

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen accessCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Small Business and Bankruptcy: Recent Changes in Kosovo and the United States Compared

  University of Miami International and Comparative Law Review · 2020 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Law

  United States, small businesses account for 99.7% of all employers, and about 47.3% of private sector employment.1 In the European Union (EU) non-financial business sector, SMEs accounted for 99.8% of all enterprises.2 These enterprises employed almost ninety-eight million people—66.6% of total employment—in the EU. SMEs are variously defined. In the United States, until recently the definition of an SME was an enterprise that employed less than 500 individuals.4 In the EU, SMEs are defined as businesses which employ less than 250 staff and have an annual turnover of less than €50 million, or whose balance sheet total is less than €43 million. This paper focuses on the smaller end of this scale: the micro SMEs. In the EU, a micro SME has ten or fewer employees, and either less than €2 million in turnover, or fewer than €2 million in assets on their balance sheet.6 Almost all SMEs (93%) in the EU are micro SMEs. The number is similar in the US. If sole proprietors (technically not employees) are added in, the percentage of firms with no more than 20 employees rises to 98%.8The point is that the bulk of all businesses are small. The question this paper asks is whether small businesses are more financially fragile and prone to failure than larger businesses, and if so, if there is any workable legislative response.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Corporate Panel: An Essay on the Unwritten Law of Corporate Reorganizations

  2020

  • Political Science
  • Law
  • Political Science

  Corporate Panel: An Essay on the Unwritten Law of Corporate Reorganizations, by Douglas Baird\nSarah R. Borders, Partner, King & Spalding LLP (Moderator)Douglas Baird, Harry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor of Law, The University of Chicago School of LawRichard Levin, Partner, Jenner & BlockBruce Markell, Professor of Bankruptcy Law and Practice, Northwestern Pritzker School of LawDavid Skeel, S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School

  Publisher

• Lawyers, Judges and Unwritten Rules

  Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  Publisher

• Corporate Bankruptcy Panel--The Fraudulent Conveyance Origins of Chapter 11: An Essay on the Unwritten Law of Corporate Reorganizations

  Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal · 2020-01-01

  article
  Publisher

• Securitization, Structured Finance, and Capital Markets

  Medical Entomology and Zoology · 2018-01-18 · 28 citations

  bookOpen access
  Publisher

• Infinite Jest: The Otiose Quest for Completeness in Validating Insolvency Judgments

  Chicago-Kent law review · 2018-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Universalism in cross-border bankruptcies strives to reduce waste, and harmonize restructuring and recoveries. Universalism’s avatar is UNCITRAL’s 1997 Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvencies (Model Law). Underlying the Model Law, however, is an implicit assumption that court orders entered in the proceeding where the debtor’s center of main interests is located will be respected in all other states in which the debtor has assets or operations. That assumption may have been incorrect, as shown by cases such as the United Kingdom’s Rubin v. Eurofinance, S.A.\nThis Article looks at UNCITRAL’s reaction to Rubin: its new Model Law on Recognition and Enforcement of Insolvency-Related Judgments (Recognition Law). It examines the Recognition Law’s reciprocity provisions, and examines the likely operation of such provisions both practically (by analyzing complex debtor in possession financing orders) and theoretically (by examining theories of translation first discussed by W.V.O. Quine). The Article concludes by expressing deep pessimism that the Recognition Law will solve the perceived problems with Model Law.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Corporate Bankruptcy Panel—Chapter 11 Cramdown Interest Rates: Till, Momentive, and the Proper Valuation Method

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  Publisher

• Amicus Brief on Arbitrability of the Discharge (Anderson v. Credit One Bank)

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2017-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Amicus Brief on the Scope of the Bankruptcy Safe Harbor for Securities Settlement Payments

  2017-09-18

  article

  Bankruptcy Code § 546(e) contains a safe harbor that prevents avoidance of a securities settlement payment, e.g., as a preferential or constructively fraudulent transfer. This amicus brief was filed in Merit Mgmt. Grp. v. FTI Consulting, Inc., No. 16-784 (U.S.). The brief explains how § 546(e) rationally constrains its scope via the statutory specification that the safe harbor only applies (because it need only apply) if the “transfer” sought to be avoided was allegedly “made by or to (or for the benefit of)” a protected securities market intermediary, such as a stockbroker or a financial institution. Ascertaining the meaning and function of that determinative scope language requires an understanding of (1) the concept of a “transfer” as the fundamental analytical transaction unit throughout the Code’s avoidance provisions, and (2) the relationship between that avoidable “transfer” concept and the inextricably interrelated concepts of who that “transfer” is “made by or to (or for the benefit of).” By its express terms, § 546(e) only shields a challenged “transfer” from avoidance if (1) that transfer was “made by” a debtor-transferor who was a qualifying intermediary, “or” (2) a party with potential liability — because the challenged transfer allegedly was made “to or for the benefit of” that party — was a protected intermediary.

Frequent coauthors

• Jason J Kilborn

  12 shared

• Bob Wessels

  Leiden University

  11 shared

• Ralph Edwin Brubaker

  6 shared

• Richard F. Broude

  4 shared

• Robert M. Lawless

  3 shared

• Susan Freeman

  2 shared

• Sarah R. Borders

  2 shared

• Douglas G. Baird

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Business Administration

  University of Chicago

  1984

• Other, Business Administration

  University of Chicago

  1979

• B.A., Economics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1976

Awards & honors

• Lawerence P. King Award from the Commercial Law League of Am…