Chris Hampson

@chrishampsonlaw

Law Professor at the University of Florida (Bankruptcy, Insolvency & Jubilee). Husband, father, cat person, puns.

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Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· 8d

Me, explaining to a civil rights lawyer how the private prison industry uses corporate restructuring and bankruptcy law to slough off debt.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· 16d

🪶My latest paper dives headlong into the question of whether the Bankruptcy Power contains an insolvency limit. The answer is YES, but the tricky bit is what kind of insolvency. Looking for a good home through Scholastica and will be up on SSRN later this fall.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Jul 18

Seen at a rest stop in Scotland. Geoffrey’s story seems to be missing a chapter … !

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Jul 15

My son likes puzzles and saw these connections immediately. Such a proud dad/Contracts professor 🥲

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Jun 21

We are having a raging family debate about the answer to this trivia question. I’m right and they are all wrong.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Jun 12

Mike Sacasas at the Christian Study Center at UF convened Professors Ana Siljak, Lillian King Abadal, and myself to talk about Pope Leo's new encyclical on artificial intelligence, mechanization, andwhat it means to be human. Record-breaking attendance and a lot of fun. Link below.

A record-breaking crowd at the CSC in Gainesville to talk about AI, faith, and the nature of being human.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Jun 1

For anyone in🌴Gainesville🦎this week, I'm on a panel discussing Pope Leo's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· May 27

Enjoyed presenting at Nevada Law on whether solvent debtors can file for bankruptcy. Working on a paper going through 150 years of history (and loads of pragmatism) on this question.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· May 20

Years ago, for the NYT Wordle game, my dad challenged us to come up with four five-letter words that use twenty different letters. A few days ago, my list came in handy.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· May 15

Congrats, UF Law class of 2026!

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Apr 16

New question (and then I think I’m ready to move on): if a state required its public schools to put this up as a poster, would that violate the Establishment Clause?

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Apr 13

Ok, Donald Trump says he thought he was a Red Cross doctor, not Jesus. I asked Chat GPT to generate two images, one of Trump as a doctor and one of Trump as Jesus. Can you spot the difference?

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Apr 7

From today:

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Apr 5

Easter is about Jesus’s victory over sin and death, not cursing, war crimes, and mocking other religions.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Mar 24

Roger Williams Law hosted a virtual panel with Steven Green, Lynette Labinger & Kayla Toney on the Establishment Clause and whether a case from my hometown in RI, Ahlquist v. Cranston (1st Cir. 2012), would be decided differently post-Lemon. Here is the prayer from the banner at issue.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Mar 18

🪶I have two new papers coming out: "Bankruptcy Abstention" is forthcoming in @bulawreview.bsky.social (2026) and "The Hidden Law of the Adamant Contemnor" (with Ryan Lee Scott) is forthcoming in @ucdavislaw.bsky.social (2026). papers.ssrn.com/abstract=619... papers.ssrn.com/abstract=619...

Courts have been finding ways to avoid hearing bankruptcy cases for a long time. This practice distinguishes bankruptcy from other types of federal cases. The federal district courts operate under the twin principles that they are courts of limited jurisdiction and have a “virtually unflagging” obligation to exercise it. But those twin principles are inverted in bankruptcy. That is because bankruptcy courts do more than just resolve disputes; they solve problems.

Bankruptcy jurisdiction is expansive and dramatic. When a debtor commences a bankruptcy case, the bankruptcy court has jurisdiction not only over the case itself and proceedings “arising in” the case, but also a broad swath of cases “related to” the bankruptcy proceedings. Yet, unlike their district court relatives, bankruptcy courts have much broader authority to dismiss or abstain from hearing cases before them, as well as to reshape the contours of a

bankruptcy case by lifting the stay or by allowing custodians to maintain control of property of the estate.

Bankruptcy courts wield that authority in a host of pragmatic, equitable, and surprising ways: pulling back when the case lacks a bankruptcy purpose, policing against a range of forum-shopping practices, abstaining when other insolvency proceedings are underway, and (most strikingly) stepping back when debtors and creditors are engaged in informal, out-of-court workouts. This Article refers to all these abstention or abstention-adjacent decisions as “bankruptcy abstention,” a mix of permissive and mandatory rules that provide contours to the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy courts by limning out bankruptcy’s “negative spaces.”

This Article maps out three situations when the bankruptcy courts pull back, explores what this unusual practice tells us about bankruptcy as an area of law, suggests how bankruptcy abstention might be refined, and proposes some lessons about the nature of courts along the way. While federalism principles can explain much of bankruptcy abstention, bankruptcy courts also pull back from re-adjudicating out-of-court workouts that they deem fair and efficient — even when the matters have not yet seen the inside of a courtroom. Bankruptcy courts also pull back when they perceive that the tools at their disposal are a poor fit for the problem they are being asked to solve. Bankruptcy abstention thus goes beyond federalism principles and demonstrates the character of the bankruptcy courts as courts of equity — courts that nurture what Alexander Bickel called the “passive virtues.” The Article suggests that we can rethink some of bankruptcy’s most contentious doctrines through that lens, coins the phrase “bankruptcy ripeness,” and provides new insight into the debate over bankruptcy exceptionalism. This reframing can, in turn, suggest guidance to attorneys, judges, and policymakers for how best to fine-tune the bankruptcy system — as well as pr…

The contempt power is an ancient one, but it is making the news
today in a dizzying variety of ways. Contempt proceedings are
colorful. They involve stubborn clients and stubborn lawyers, and
sometimes even more stubborn judges. They usually occur at high
speed, especially compared to the glacial pace of most legal
proceedings. Direct criminal contempt is particularly fast: a person
who disrupts or disrespects the court can find him- or herself
spending a night in jail after summary process. Even in civil
contempt cases, when the judge threatens a contemnor with steep

fines or indefinite imprisonment, the contemnor usually complies
quickly.

This Article is not about the fast cases. We focus instead on the
longest-lasting contempt cases in contemporary American law, the
ones where the contemnor buckles in for the long haul. The five
cases that we cover here may not be timely, but they are timeless.
They involve a deep-sea engineer, an ex-husband, a financial
adviser, a secretive mother, and two brothers deprived of their
ancestral land. The contemnors say that they were defending
priceless things or people from the judicial system: their money,
their land, their newborn child — even gold coins from a historic
shipwreck. Their adversaries view them as liars, cheats, abusers,
maybe even murderers.

In each of these cases, the contemnor served more than five years for
civil contempt of court — and in each of these cases, the legal
rationale for letting them out has been obscured from public view,
whether because the decision was unpublished, sealed, or simply
made orally with no written opinion. In all five cases, our research
and advocacy are responsible for making the court’s reasoning
public. This Article thus presents, for the first time, what we call
the “hidden law” of the adamant contemnor.

After exploring the new insight we have into these five adamant
contemnor cases, the Article goes on to outline how this classic
“battle of wills” should be conducted within a rule-of-law system.
We advocate for better modeling of rational actors, expert
assessments of mental health, objective standards, benchmarks and
outer bounds, and written, published decisions. The Article
concludes with specific proposals for reform, including guidance for
courts, executives, and legislatures.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Mar 5

Professor Scott and I understand that Tommy Thompson was released from federal prison yesterday. Thompson, the finder of the historic wreck of the S.S. Central America, was imprisoned for over 9 years for civil contempt and served 2 years for criminal contempt.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Sep 1

Mm, it’s good.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Sep 1

When a senior law professor asks to see what you’re working on

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Aug 19

The best movies are bankruptcy movies.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Jul 21

Judge Fagone (Bankr. D. Me.) and Eric Brunstad Jr. spoke on Appellate Trends at the ABI Conference at Bretton Woods last week. I got to sit amidst the stars and say a few words about discharge exceptions and solvent debtors. High-octane stuff for 8am!

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Apr 29

My first time in Ann Arbor, for the Junior Scholars Conference at the University of Michigan. I met amazing people, got great feedback on my Jubilee essay, and found some windows with little depictions of Bankruptcy and Contracts!

The group photo of the 2025 junior scholars conference at the University of Michigan.

Me standing in the University of Michigan Law School quad.

A cartoon in a window about bankruptcy! A man is talking to another outside a pawn shop.

A cartoon in a window about Contracts -- several people sitting around a table.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Mar 28

UPDATE: My old firm, WilmerHale, just filed an 11-count, 63-page complaint against 52 defendants: the Executive Office of the President, the DOJ, a host of federal agencies, and cabinet-level officials (everyone but Trump and Vance).

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Feb 7

It's submission season! This Essay is out looking for a good home in a law review. papers.ssrn.com/abstract=510...

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Jan 10

It's been an encouraging and mind-blowing couple of months. The ABI inducted me into its 40 Under 40 cohort. My paper "Bankruptcy Fiduciaries" was named as a co-winner of the AALS Scholarly Papers competition. And my senior colleagues at Florida Law voted to promote me to Associate Professor [1/2]

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Sep 3

💡New paper! People kept asking me what happens when defamation defendants like Rudy Giuliani and Alex Jones file for bankruptcy. So I wrote a little piece about it, now forthcoming in the Journal of Free Speech Law. [1/2]

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Feb 28

Guys, if you teach Contracts, care about consumers, or just need a Wednesday Giggle, look up the House of Illuminati's "Willy's Chocolate Experience" in Glasgow.

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Feb 14

💕 Did you know Valentine’s Day has a bankruptcy angle? The New England Confectionary Company (NECCO) makes the famous candy hearts. In 2018, the company filed for bankruptcy in Massachusetts and was purchased by Spangler Candy of Ohio. The oldest American candy exists today thanks to chapter 11! 💕

Chris Hampson@chrishampsonlaw· Feb 4

The art would get even better if a “true owner” shows up.