Professor Jonathan Lipson: 2020 Friel-Scanlan Lecture

On November 10, 2020, Temple Law Professor and 10-Q Faculty Editor Jonathan Lipson delivered the 2020 Friel-Scanlan lecture titled “Sex, Drugs, and Bankruptcy: Due Process and Social Debt.” The lecture was delivered against the backdrop of the American opioid crisis and recent events surrounding the well-publicized bankruptcies of Purdue Pharma, Boy Scouts of America, and other debtors with liability for egregious misconduct. Professor Lipson argued that a bankruptcy system which offers sweeping releases from civil and criminal liability for those involved in this wrongdoing upsets the basic tenets of Due Process.