Reinventing Bankruptcy Law: A History of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, Virginia Torrie (ed) University of Toronto Press, Toronto), 2020 317 pp., C$ 56.25, ISBN 978‐1‐4875‐0642‐1

• Published date: 01 December 2020
• Date: 01 December 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/iir.1389
• Author: Bashar H. Malkawi

BOOK REVIEW

Reinventing Bankruptcy Law: A History of the

Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act

Edited by Virginia Torrie (ed)

(2020, University of Toronto Press, Toronto), 317 pp., C$ 56.25, ISBN 978-1-4875-0642-1

This book could not come at a more appropriate time than now. Many businesses are on the

verge of going bankrupt due to the COVID-19 health crisis. New innovative insolvency reforms

in many countries worldwide are being adopted as a response. These measures include new

regimes for micro- and small enterprises, favouring workouts and pre-insolvency proceedings,

minimizing the use of courts, cross class cram down, mitigating clawback risks and creating

new insolvency courts. These are considered crucial measures for economic recovery. As the

book proves, economic downturns serve as catalyst for change. History repeats itself.

The opus sets out to provide a working tool for academics, practitioners and students who

are interested in bankruptcy law in Canada. The book is a “first”, as it provides a historical

account of Canada's premier corporate restructuring statute. The author adopts a research

approach that combines legal history, socio-legal theory, political sciences and doctrinal legal

analysis. Although the book is Canadian-centric, it nevertheless provides comparisons with

other jurisdictions, such as England and the United States. The book resonates with the experi-

ences of many countries, which at the beginning enacted their bankruptcy laws to protect credi-

tors and later changed their stance to protect debtors.

The book consists of two parts and 10 chapters. The book does not include appendices or

supplementary documents which might have contained extracts from the laws relevant to the

book. Though the laws are all readily available on the Internet, it would have been nevertheless

convenient to have some of these laws in hard copy. The author begins the book (pp. 3–5) by

showcasing the background of the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA), legally and

politically akin to the US Chapter 11 reorganization law, and discussing how the judiciary

stepped in to elaborate on provisions of the law where the legislative authority failed to do

so. In essence, the book is about “black-letter law”vis-à-vis “law in practice”. In a helpful man-

ner, especially for those unfamiliar with bankruptcy, the author provides definitions of some of

main terms used in bankruptcy. According to the author, the term “reorganization”is a com-

mercial term and legally defined. This may be true, but the CCAA also provides rules to be

followed in case of insolvency, which in another way is also a definition for the term and

process.

In Part II, Chapters 1 and 2, the author provides an overview of the history of private agree-

ments, such as trust deeds in English jurisprudence, which served at the time as an appropriate

instrument to restructure corporations. It is noticeable that, during that period of time,

Received: 12 June 2020 Accepted: 8 July 2020

DOI: 10.1002/iir.1389

© 2020 INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

418 Int Insolv Rev. 2020;29:418–420.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/iir