An International Bankruptcy Code: New Thoughts on an Old Idea

Abstract

A CHANCE search several years ago at the British Museum led us to a pamphlet fourteen pages long, entitled Outline of Plan of an International Bankrupt Code for the Dilerent Commercial States of Europe. The pamphlet, printed in London by Cox and Baylis, Great Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, is without date and author's name. There is a hand-written dedication on the frontpage: To Jeremy Bentham Esq. with the author's best respects and the copy has another hand-written addition just below the title: by J. Henry. Jabez Henry is the author of the pamphlet, and identification can be made from its context. Footnotes contain references to the author's Tract on Foreign Law, and, as is known from Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Conflict of Laws, this tract is the treatise which Henry brought out in London in 1823 under the lengthy title: The Judgment of the Court of Demerara in the Case of Odwin v. Forbes, on the Plea of the English Certificate of Bankruptcy in Bar, in a Foreign Jurisdiction, to the Suit of a Foreign Creditor, as Confirmed in Appeal, with the Authorities, and Foreign and English Cases-To which is Prefixed a Treatise on the Difference between Personal and Real Statutes, and its Effect on Foreign Judgments and Contracts, Marriages and Wills.