Alexandria, Va. — Prof. Omer Kimhi of Haifa University Faculty of Law (Israel) and Arno Doebert of Reimer Rechtsanwälte (Hamburg) won the American Bankruptcy Institute’s (ABI) Sixth Annual Judge Wes Steen ABI Law Review Writing Prize for their article "Bankruptcy Law as a Balancing System: Lessons Learned from a Comparative Analysis of the Intersection Between Labor and Bankruptcy Laws," which appeared in the Summer 2015 edition of the ABI Law Review. Prof. Kimhi and Doebert will share $5,000 for their work on the article.
Kimhi and Doebert’s article, which was funded with a grant from the German Israel Foundation (Young Scientist Program), examines whether labor laws should remain unchanged even when employment protections jeopardize the continued operation of a distressed firm, or whether bankruptcy law should override the protections and facilitate corporate rehabilitation. They studied the bankruptcy policies of three European jurisdictions (Netherlands, France and Germany) and compared them to the approach taken in U.S. bankruptcy law.
Kimhi is an associate professor at the Haifa University Law Faculty in Haifa, Israel, and serves as the head of the LL.M. in business law program that is set to open this summer. His research areas include bankruptcy laws, corporate laws and local government laws, and he has published articles in the Boston University Law Review and Yale Journal on Regulation. He received his B.A. in economics from Tel-Aviv University in 1998, his M.B.A. from Tel-Aviv University in 2003 and his J.S.D. from New York University in 2007.
Doebert is an insolvency lawyer at Reimer Rechtsanwälte. He worked on the article while earning his doctorate at the Bucerius Law School in 2015.
The prize’s namesake, Bankruptcy Judge Wesley Steen, retired from the bench in January after 17 years of distinguished service in both the Southern District of Texas and the Middle District of Louisiana. The only judge to ever serve as ABI President (2006-07), he was also a member of the ABI Law Review advisory board. To honor Judge Steen, ABI established an annual ABI Law Review prize in 2010 in his name for the best article as selected by the advisory board.
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ABI is the largest multi-disciplinary, nonpartisan organization dedicated to research and education on matters related to insolvency. ABI was founded in 1982 to provide Congress and the public with unbiased analysis of bankruptcy issues. The ABI membership includes more than 12,000 attorneys, accountants, bankers, judges, professors, lenders, turnaround specialists and other bankruptcy professionals, providing a forum for the exchange of ideas and information. For additional information on ABI, visit www.abiworld.org. For additional conference information, visit http://www.abi.org/calendar-of-events.