New Books in Public Policy13 Des 2024

Melissa B. Jacoby, "Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal" (New Press, 2024)

In theory, bankruptcy in America exists to cancel or restructure debts for people and companies that have way too many--a safety valve designed to provide a mechanism for restarting lives and businesses when things go wrong financially. In this brilliant and paradigm-shifting book, legal scholar Melissa B. Jacoby shows how bankruptcy has also become an escape hatch for powerful individuals, corporations, and governments, contributing in unseen and poorly understood ways to race, gender, and class inequality in America. When cities go bankrupt, for example, police unions enjoy added leverage while police brutality victims are denied a seat at the negotiating table; the system is more forgiving of civil rights abuses than of the parking tickets disproportionately distributed in African American neighborhoods. Across a broad range of crucial issues, Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal (New Press, 2024) reveals the hidden mechanisms by which bankruptcy impacts everything from sexual harassment to health care, police violence to employment discrimination, and the opioid crisis to gun violence. In the tradition of Matthew Desmond's groundbreaking Evicted, Unjust Debts is a riveting and original work of accessible scholarship with huge implications for ordinary people and will set the terms of debate for this vital subject. Melissa B. Jacoby is the Graham Kenan Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Caleb Zakarin is editor at the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

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Episoder(2131)

Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration

In Cast Out: A Call For A Forgiving Society in an Age of Incarceration (Beacon Press, 2026), civil rights lawyer Joseph Margulies insists that those who commit even the most heinous crimes are one of...

23 Jul 1h

Angela Frederick, "Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Age of Disaster" (NYU Press, 2025)

A call to place disability at the center of climate and disaster responsesEvery disaster is a disability disaster, argues Angela Frederick. Disabled Power: A Storm, A Grid, and Embodied Harm in the Ag...

18 Jul 36min

Georgia Holly et al, .eds., "Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond" (U Edinburgh Press, 2025)

Heritage in the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and Beyond (U Edinburgh Press, 2025) outlines the need to embed Ocean Heritage into ocean science, sustainable dev...

18 Jul 59min

Heart-Centered Connections: Seven Essential Skills for Helping Neurodiverse and Marginalized Children Thrive

Heart-Centered Connections: Seven Essential Skills for Helping Neurodiverse and Marginalized Children Thrive is a transformative guide for working with a child who is left out, left behind, or labeled...

16 Jul 35min

Doubled Up: Shared Households and the Precarious Lives of Families

More than eleven million children in the US live in doubled-up households, sharing space with extended family or friends. These households are even more common among low-income families, families of c...

9 Jul 56min

Nicholas Freudenberg, "Fighting for New York: Activism for Health and Social Justice Since The 1960s" (Columbia UP, 2026)

Today I'm speaking with Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Public Health at the CUNY School of Public Health. We are discussing his book, Fighting for New York: Activism for Hea...

7 Jul 56min

Martina Baradel, "21st Century Yakuza: Death of Japanese Organised Crime" (Oxford UP, 2026)

Once dominant and institutionalised, the Yakuza, one of Japan's best known criminal organisations, is now shrinking under the combined pressure of legal exclusion, social stigmatisation, and market...

5 Jul 1h 5min

Why Democracy’s Troubles Should Come as No Surprise

Why have so many democracies become more polarized, unstable, and vulnerable to authoritarianism? And why did so many political observers fail to see it coming? In this episode of the People, Power, P...

23 Jun 0s