Anne Fleming, City of Debtors: A Century of Fringe Finance (2018).

Aditi Bagchi

About fifteen years ago, Bruce Mann’s Republic of Debtors offered an intriguing narrative about the origins of American bankruptcy law. Among other claims, Mann suggested that debt became respectable when respectable people found themselves in debt. When debt moved in from the fringe, our legal treatment of debt softened.

Anne Fleming tells a related story in our treatment of debt, but her focus is on poor debtors in New […]