Demystification of Executory Contracts in Bankruptcy

Prof. Jay L. Westbrook is the Benno C. Schmidt Chair of Business Law at The University of Texas School of Law in Austin, Texas. He has also taught at Harvard Law School, the University of London and Humboldt University-Berlin.

Prof. Westbrook headed the American Law Institute Transnational Insolvency Project and the U.S. Delegation to the UNICITRAL Working Group on Transnational Insolvency. Among his books and articles are The Law of Debtors and Creditors (Aspen 6th ed. 2009) (co-author) and A Global View of Business Insolvency Systems (Martinus Nijhoff 2010) (senior editor and co-author). He also co-wrote the Warren & Westbrook column for several years in the ABI Journal with now-Senator Elizabeth Warren (D. Mass.).

Prof. Westbrook serves as a consultant to the IMF and the World Bank. He received both his B.A. and J.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Hon. Michelle M. Harner is a U.S. Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Maryland in Baltimore, appointed in 2017.

Prior to her appointment to the bench, she was the Francis King Carey Professor of Law and the Director of the Business Law Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, where she taught courses in bankruptcy and creditors’ rights, business associations, business planning, corporate finance and the legal profession. Judge Harner lectured frequently during her academic career on various topics involving corporate governance, financially distressed entities, risk management and related legal issues. Her academic scholarship is widely published, with her publications appearing in, among others, the Vanderbilt Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Washington University Law Review, Minnesota Law Review, Indiana Law Journal, Fordham Law Review (reprinted in Corporate Practice Commentator), Washington & Lee Law Review, William & Mary Law Review, University of Illinois Law Review, Arizona Law Review (reprinted in Corporate Practice Commentator) and Florida Law Review.

Judge Harner has served as the Associate Reporter to the Advisory Committee on the Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, the Reporter to the ABI Commission to Study the Reform of Chapter 11, and a member of the Dodd-Frank Study Working Group for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. She also served as the Robert M. Zinman ABI Resident Scholar for the fall of 2015. Judge Harner is an elected member of the American Law Institute and Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy. She previously was in private practice in business restructuring, insolvency, bankruptcy and related transactional fields, most recently as a partner at the Chicago office of the international law firm Jones Day.

Judge Harner received her B.A. cum laude from Boston College in 1992 and her J.D. summa cum laude from The Ohio State University College of Law in 1995.