Melissa B. Jacoby

Education

• J.D., University of Pennsylvania
• B.A., University of Pennsylvania

Melissa Jacoby is the George R. Ward Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies. Her scholarship takes interdisciplinary approaches to bankruptcy, debtor-creditor and commercial law, and she has received two awards for her scholarship on the relationship between debt, law, and health. Current research projects include an empirical study documenting credit card and mortgage use for medical bills by people who file for bankruptcy, several papers on bankrupt and near-bankrupt homeowners, judicial behavior on the bankruptcy court, the feasibility of corporate reorganization law, and an ongoing examination of the parenthood loan market within several theoretical frameworks. Jacoby is a co-principal investigator of the 2007 Consumer Bankruptcy Project, and a Fellow of the Bankruptcy Data Project at Harvard University. Electronic versions of some of Jacoby's publications can be found at http://ssrn.com/author=224683 and her full curriculum vitae is maintained at http://works.bepress.com/melissa_jacoby/. She and her research have been cited in the New York Times, L.A. Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and on National Public Radio.

At UNC, Jacoby teaches bankruptcy, contracts, corporate reorganization, and secured transactions (commercial law). In Spring 2009, she was the inaugural winner of the Robert G. Byrd Award for Excellence and Creativity in Teaching.

Jacoby was elected a member of the American Law Institutein 2004. She was elected a member of the National Bankruptcy Conference in 1999 and now serves on the Conference's executive committee. She is a recent past chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Financial Institutions and Consumer Financial Services, and a former consultant to an advisory committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. Jacoby's academic career started in 2000 at Temple University, and she moved to UNC-Chapel Hill with a tenured associate professor appointment in 2004. Earlier in her career, she clerked for the Honorable Robert E. Ginsberg of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the Honorable Marjorie O. Rendell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and worked in Washington D.C. as a senior staff attorney for the National Bankruptcy Review Commission.

Selected Publications

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• Managing Medical Bills on the Brink of Bankruptcy (with M. Holman), _ YALE J. HEALTH POL'Y L. & ETHICS _ (Forthcoming 2010). [SSRN]
• The Debt Financing of Parenthood, 72 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS. 147 (2009). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN]
• Homeownership Risk Beyond a Subprime Crisis: The Role of Delinquency Management, 76 FORDHAM L. REV. 2261 (2008). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein, BEPress]
• Beyond Hospital Misbehavior: An Alternative Account of Medical-Related Financial Distress (with E. Warren), 100 NW. U.L. REV. 535 (2006). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein, BEPress]
• Fast, Cheap, and Creditor-Controlled: Is Corporate Reorganization Failing? 54 BUFF. L. REV. 401 (2006) (reviewing Lynn M. LoPucki, COURTING FAILURE: HOW COMPETITION FOR BIG CASES IS CORRUPTING THE BANKRUPTCY COURTS (2005)). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein, BEPress KF1526 .L67 2005]
• Ripple or Revolution? The Indeterminacy of Statutory Bankruptcy Reform, 79 AM. BANK. L.J. 169 (2005) (symposium). [Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, BEPress]
• Negotiating Bankruptcy Legislation Through the News Media, 41 HOUS. L. REV. 1091 (2004). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein, BEPress]
• The Bankruptcy Code at Twenty-Five and the Next Generation of Lawmaking, 78 AM. BANKR. L.J. 221 (2004). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein, BEPress]
• Foreclosing on Fame: Exploring the Uncharted Boundaries of the Right of Publicity, 77 N.Y.U. L. REV. 1322 (2002) (with D. Zimmerman) (reprinted in 11 J. BANKR. L. & PRAC. (2002)). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein, BEPress]
• Rethinking the Debates Over Health Care Financing: Evidence From the Bankruptcy Courts, (with T.Sullivan & E. Warren), 76 N.Y.U. L. REV. 375 (2001). [Westlaw, Lexis/Nexis, SSRN, Hein, BEPress]

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Areas of Expertise

• Bankruptcy
• Commercial Law
• Contracts

Contact Information