About

Melissa B. Jacoby is the Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor of Law, Emerita at the University of North Carolina School of Law. She teaches and studies commercial law and bankruptcy law, focusing on their intersections with other fields. Jacoby has been elected to several prestigious organizations, including the American Law Institute, the National Bankruptcy Conference, the American College of Bankruptcy, and the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers. She has served as the Robert M. Zinman Scholar for the American Bankruptcy Institute and has received awards such as the Grant Gilmore Award for scholarship and the Byrd Award for teaching. Her scholarly work includes the publication of her book 'Unjust Debts,' which was published by The New Press in June 2024 and received critical acclaim, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly and recognition as one of the Financial Times’ best summer economics books for 2024. Jacoby's research addresses issues related to bankruptcy, privacy, genetic information, and social inequality. She has been appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States to assist the Federal Judicial Center with educational programming and was reappointed for a second term. In Fall 2024, she served as the Sullivan & Cromwell Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. Before her tenure at UNC, Jacoby taught at Temple University and held judicial clerkships with the Honorable Robert E. Ginsberg of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the Honorable Marjorie O. Rendell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She also worked as a staff attorney for the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. Jacoby holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences, where she was a history major.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• Business
• Industrial organization
• Psychology
• Finance
• Economics
• Law and economics

Selected publications

• 23andMe’s bankruptcy raises concerns about privacy in the era of big data

  BMJ · 2025-05-27 · 6 citations

  editorialOpen access

  On 23 March 2025, the direct-to-consumer genetic testing company 23andMe filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition in a US bankruptcy court. 1 The objective of this bankruptcy is to sell the company quickly, as is common through Chapter 11.But 23andMe has a distinctive feature: the company holds a genetic dataset drawn from over 15 million customers. 2 3The sale of 23andMe through bankruptcy thus raises extensive privacy and discrimination issues that are not comprehensively addressed under US laws.Current US federal laws would need to be updated or a comprehensive privacy law enacted to give all Americans adequate control over their data, including full protection from discrimination based on their genetic profile.The stakes are particularly high given the range of information 23andMe holds.The company has collected genetic information, registration information (such as name, address, and credit card information), sample information (including saliva samples and laboratory values), self-reported information (such as health-related information, family history, and ethnicity), biometric information to verify customers' identity, user content including messages sent via 23andMe's services, and web-behaviour information. 4Some information could reveal things about family members who never consented.Bankruptcy offers a mechanism to sell this personal information free and clear of allegations of previous mishandling.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bankruptcy, Genetic Information, and Privacy — Selling Personal Information

  New England Journal of Medicine · 2025-03-01 · 10 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Sorting Bugs and Features of Mass Tort Bankruptcy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Other Judges' Cases

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• Unbundling Business Bankruptcy Law

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Business
  • Law
  PublisherDOI

• Fake and Real People in Bankruptcy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Shocking Business Bankruptcy Law

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Law
  • Business
  PublisherDOI

• Bankruptcy sales

  Edward Elgar Publishing eBooks · 2020-06-26

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Identifies the ways in which the federal bankruptcy process can create value over and above what can be realized through compulsory state processes through either recapitalization or sale of the firm or its assets. Explores procedural and governance-based concerns about value maximization and allocation in all-asset sales and discusses how Ice Cube Bonds would preserve the ability to address these concerns in contexts that include credit bidding and free-and-clear sales.

  PublisherDOI

• Consumer Protection after a Global Financial Crisis

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2019-04-15

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Like other major events, the Global Financial Crisis generated a large and diffuse body of academic analysis. As part of a broader call for operationalizing the study of crises as policy shocks and resulting responses, which inevitably derail from elegant theories, we examine how regulatory protagonists approached consumer protection after the GFC, guided by six elements that should be considered in any policy shock context. After reviewing the introduction and philosophy of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, created as part of the Dodd–Frank Act of 2010, we consider four examples of how consumer protection unfolded in the crises’ aftermath that have received less attention. Our case studies investigate a common set of queries. We sought to identify the parties who cared sufficiently about a given issue to engage with it and try to shape policy, as well as the evolving nature of the relevant policy agenda. We also looked for key changes in policy, which could be reflected in various forms—whether establishing an entirely new regulatory agency, formulating novel enforcement strategies, or deflecting policy reforms. The first of our case studies focuses on operations of the Federal Trade Commission in the GFC’s aftermath. Although the Dodd–Frank Act shifted some obligations toward the CFPB, we find that the FTC continued to worry about and seek to address fraud against consumers. But it tended to focus on shady practices that arose in response to the GFC rather than those that facilitated it. Our second case study examines the Congressional adoption of a carveout from CFPB authority for auto dealers, which resulted from strong lobbying by car companies worried about a cratering sales environment, and the aftermath of the policy. Here, we observe that this carveout allowed a significant amount of troubling auto lending activity to continue and expand, with potentially systemic consequences. Loan servicer misbehavior, particularly in the form of robosigning, is the focus of our third case study. Although Dodd–Frank did not explicitly address robosigning, the new agency it created, the CFPB, was able to draw on its broad authority to address this newly arising problem. And, because the CFPB had authority over student loan servicers, the agency could pivot relatively quickly from the mortgage context to the student loan context. Our fourth and final case study is the rise and fall of Operation Choke Point, an understandably controversial interagency program, convened by the U.S. Department of Justice, which, with the GFC fresh in mind, attempted to curtail fraudulent activities by cutting off access to online payment mechanisms. Here, we see an anti-fraud effort that was particularly vulnerable to a change in presidential administration and political climate because its designers had invested little effort in building public awareness and support for the program. The Article concludes with an overall assessment and suggestions for other focal points for which our approach would be useful. The examples span a range of other domestic and global policy contexts.

  Publisher

• Bankruptcy à la Carte: The Story of, and Trouble with, the Weinstein Company Bankruptcy

  eYLS (Yale Law School) · 2019-11-20

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Teresa A. Sullivan

  University of Virginia

  6 shared

• Edward J. Janger

  5 shared

• Mirya R. Holman

  4 shared

• Elizabeth Warren

  4 shared

• Roberto G. Quercia

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  3 shared

• Mark R. Lindblad

  3 shared

• Elizabeth Warren

  Johns Hopkins University

  2 shared

• Huifang Zhao

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  2 shared

Education

• B.A., Political Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1980

• Other

  University of California, Berkeley School of Law

  1983

• Ph.D., Political Science

  University of California, Berkeley

  1989

Awards & honors

• Grant Gilmore Award for scholarship from the American Colleg…
• Byrd Award for teaching