Bruce A. Markell
Professor of Bankruptcy Law and Practice, and Edward Avery Harriman Lecturer in Law
Phone
(312) 503-4060
Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
Assistant
Alyson Smith
Assistant Phone
(312) 503-1774
Assistant Email
alyson.smith@law.northwestern.edu
Biography
Bruce A. Markell was appointed the Professor of Bankruptcy Law and Practice at Northwestern in 2015. From 2013 to 2015, he was the Jeffrey A. Stoops Professor of Law at Florida State University School of Law, and before that he was a United States Bankruptcy Judge for the District of Nevada, a position he had held since 2004. After law school, he clerked for then-judge Anthony M. Kennedy on the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Before taking the bench, he practiced bankruptcy and business law in Los Angeles for ten years (where he was a partner at Sidley & Austin), and was a law professor for fourteen. He is the author of numerous articles on bankruptcy and commercial law, and a co-author of four law school casebooks. He has been a visiting professor at, among other schools, Peking University School of Law in Beijing, and Harvard Law School. He contributes to Collier on Bankruptcy, and is a member of Collier ’s editorial advisory board. He is a conferee of the National Bankruptcy Conference, a fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, a charter member of the International Insolvency Institute, and a member of the American Law Institute. He is a founding member of the NITA-trained faculty of the Advanced Consumer Bankruptcy Practice Institute. Professor Markell also consults with the International Monetary Fund on insolvency-related issues (having been part of the IMF’s missions to Ireland, Bosnia, Belarus, Montenegro, Serbia, Georgia, and Greece), and was the primary drafter of Kosovo’s current bankruptcy law. He is an associate editor of the Bankruptcy Law Letter, and regularly contributes articles to that publication. In 2022, Professor Markell received the Lawerence P. King Award from the Commercial Law League of America.
Areas of Expertise
- Commercial Law
- Contracts
- Bankruptcy
- Secured Transactions
- Comparative Bankruptcy Systems
- Cross-Border Aspects of Bankruptcy
Courses
Selected Publications
- Cases and Materials on Contracts: Making and Doing Deals, 6th ed. (2022) (with David G. Epstein & Lawrence Ponoroff).
- Bankruptcy: Dealing with Financial Failure for Individuals and Businesses, 5th ed. (2021) (with David G. Epstein, Steve Nickles & Larry Ponoroff).
- Courting Equity in Bankruptcy, 94 American Bankruptcy Law Journal 227 (2020).
- Lawyers, Judges and Unwritten Rules, 36 Emory Bankruptcy Developments Journal 719 (2020).
- Small Business and Bankruptcy: Recent Changes in Kosovo and the United States Compared, 26 University Of Miami International & Comparative Law Review 255 (2020).
- The Needs of the Many: Equitable Mootness’ Pernicious Effects, 93 American Bankruptcy Law Journal 377 (2019).
Education
- BA, Pitzer College
- JD, University of California, Davis
Prior Appointments
- Professor of Bankruptcy Law and Practice, Sep 2021, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
- Edward Avery Harriman Professor of Bankruptcy Law and Practice, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law
- Visiting Professor of Law, Northwestern University School of Law
- Jeffrey A. Stoops Professor of Law, Florida State College of Law
- United States Bankruptcy Judge, District of Nevada
- Doris S. and Theodore B. Lee Professor of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Law
- Bruce W. Nichols Visiting Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
- Professor of Law, Indiana University--Bloomington School of Law