A small point in the deep legislative history of municipal bankruptcy law

 I am finalizing my article on the history of the genesis of municipal bankruptcy law, and I realized the following point is not significant enough to include, so I am posting the passage here sans its footnotes (copyright Josiah M. Daniel, III, 2017-2025):

A source who ought to have known, Sanders Shanks, Jr., editor of the Bond Buyer, credits Florida's Senator Duncan I. Fletcher with filing the first-ever municipal-bankruptcy bill. For instance, in a letter two years later Shanks asserted: 

In February, 1933, during the closing days of the last "lame duck" session of Congress, Senator Fletcher of Florida introduced an amendment to the federal bankruptcy law under which insolvent municipalities might arrange a special composition of their debts with the consent of holders of a majority of such debts. This bill was introduced at the instance of officials of certain Florida municipalities. At about the same time, and in ignorance of the introduction of this bill, representatives of creditors of Florida and other municipalities [the Florida Bondholders Group] visited Washington with the express purpose of investigating the possibility of securing federal legislation of this very nature. . . . 

His memory is incorrect, inaccurately conflating the promulgation of Wyman’s Draft with a “visit [to] Washington” by the Florida Bondholders Group that occurred a month later. Moreover, although he was a member of that group and a contemporary actor, Shanks’s account is not borne out by the Congressional Record. In the dame duck Congress, Fletcher never introduced either an amendment to H.R. 14359 or S. 5551 or any standalone bill. Rather the record indicates for this period that this Senator submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee something “intended to be proposed by him,” but he acknowledged that it was never filed.  Only in the opening weeks of the new Congress, the 73rd, or New Deal, Congress did Fletcher file his own municipal bankruptcy bill, S. 403, and later an update of it. These texts were based on the Wyman Draft but Fletcher’s two bills lacked features Wilcox had added to his first bill. Fletcher’s bills died, and the Senator had no responsibility for the creation of municipal bankruptcy.

Hurrah for the Alliance for Texas History

I attended the first annual conference of the new organization for those who are serious about Texas history, the Alliance for Texas History. It was excellent. Here is a good report about the meeting:

www.texasobserver.org/new-mccarthyism-alliance-for-texas-history/

About my new paper, "The Historiographical Problem of Municipal Bankruptcy Law" -- Part Four

Here is the heart of it, at pages 6-7 sans footnotes:

        "Applied to municipalities, the L&E scholars argue that bankruptcy process ought to enable the creditors to intervene in those Chapter 9 debtors’ customary, state-law-based, and locally-situated political decision-making in order to “to collect taxes to pay preexisting debt; to order reductions in expenditures; to sell municipal assets; and perhaps even to reorganize the boundaries of or to dissolve the debtor municipality”—in order to increase recoveries on the creditors’ debt claims as much as possible and, more generally, for the sake of economic efficiency and wealth maximization.  Moreover, the L&E critics of municipal bankruptcy have recently taken a “turn to history” in an effort to buttress their prescriptions for a more muscular, creditor-centric municipal bankruptcy process; but in doing so they are asserting a forensic and factually flawed version of the story of the inception and early years of Chapter IX. 

        That creates the instant historiographical problem: how to find, understand, and then tell the story of the origin of municipal bankruptcy."

-Josiah Daniel

(c) 2025

About my newest paper, "The Historiographical Problem of Municipal Bankruptcy Law" -- Part Three (the research sources)

I have been asked, "Your article is quite lengthy, so can you tell me what it is about?" 

As I stated in the Abstract, it is the first history of the genesis of municipal bankruptcy law to have been written from original, primary sources. I found those sources in the course of my research not only in the legislative records (bills, committee proceedings, statements and debates on the floor of the house, conference committee work, and presidential involvement) but--I submit importantly--also from research in archives such as the Sumners Papers in the Dallas Historical Society, the records of the House Judiciary Committee in the papers of Legislative Branch of the National Archives, case papers in the Federal Judicial Records Center that is part of the National Archives's Southwest Branch, and various documents in the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. That research focuses on the inception of positive law, the enactment of an addition to the Bankruptcy Act of 1898, from 1933-1938, that provides judicial relief for the insolvency of municipalities, that is, cities, towns, taxing districts, and other political subdivisions of those states that have authorized their subdivisions to file cases in federal courts under it. 

Re my newest paper, "The Historiographical Problem of Municipal Bankruptcy Law" -- Part Two

One of my criticisms of the "law and economics" literature that has purported to find and tell the story of the genesis of municipal bankruptcy law (in my new article, "The Historiographical Problem of Municipal Bankruptcy Law" on SSRN at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5253527) is that its authors have performed no appreciable research in deep, archival sources.

Today I read a piece in Lapham's Quarterly that reinforces my point:

"It’s been said that . . . within the first six years of life, the human mind replicates the dream of its five-thousand-year journey from the sand castle cities of ancient Mesopotamia. The figures in the dream have left the signs of their passing in what we know as the historical record, navigational lights flashing across the gulf of time on scraps of papyrus and scratchings in stone, on ships’ logs and bronze coins, as epic poems and totem poles and painted ceilings, in confessions voluntary and coerced, in five-act plays and three-part songs."

Lewis H. Lapham, "The Gulf of Time: An Introduction to Lapham’s Quarterly," at www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-war/gulf-time (emphasis added). 

My newest article, "The Historiological Problem of Municipal Bankruptcy Law" -- part one

I have placed my draft article "THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL PROBLEM OF MUNICIPAL BANKRUPTCY LAW" on SSRN, and I seek comments. 

I will be posting about the article in the next several posts. Here is the first:

Today I was honored that the History Department of UT Austin featured my article in its social media outreach. This summary is on Linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:share:7331678370583265281

I am very pleased to be a member of the new organization designed and intended to promote history that gives dignity to all and is honest and accurate, the Alliance for Texas History.

---> www.alliancefortexashistory.org

The first annual conference of the Alliance will be held in San Marcos, Texas, on the campus of Texas State University beginning on Wednesday, May 14, 2025, through Saturday, May 17. Here is the schedule of presentations.....going to be difficult to choose among many very interesting papers!

---> heyzine.com/flip-book/f911b2f711.html#page/1