Court Opinion

ID: 9425081
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:13:40.962133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:53.593716
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I concur fully in the Court’s opinion. The painstaking and precise delineation by Mr. Justice Harlan of the interests involved in Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U. S. 371 (1971), ought not to be ignored as the dissenting opinions would do. Moreover, the exclusivity of a State’s control of marriage and divorce is a far cry from the degree of government control over relations between debtor and creditor, as Mr. Justice Blackmun has pointed out. In a bankruptcy proceeding the government, through the court, is no more than the overseer and the administrator of the process; it is not the absolute and exclusive controller as with the dissolution of marriage. Like the descent and distribution of property for which all States have provided statutes and probate courts, the bankruptcy court is but one mode of orderly adjustment with creditors; it is not the only one since many debtors work out binding private adjustments with creditors.
*451Surely there are strong arguments, as a matter of policy, for the result the dissenting view asserts. But Congress has not yet seen fit to declare the policy that the dissenters now find in the Constitution. In 1970 Congress authorized a tripartite commission to review the bankruptcy laws.1 The commission has been engaged in its task for more than two years and it is hardly likely that this problem will escape its consideration.2 The Constitution is not the exclusive source of law reform, even needed reform, in our system.

 Pub. L. 91-354, 84 Stat. 468.

 The commission’s mandate requires it to “study, analyze, evaluate, and recommend changes” in the Bankruptcy Act “in order for such Act to reflect and adequately meet the demands of present technical, financial, and commercial activities. The commission’s study . . . shall include a consideration of the basic philosophy of bankruptcy, the causes of bankruptcy, the possible alternatives to the present system of bankruptcy administration, the applicability of advanced management techniques to achieve economies in the administration of the Act, and all other matters which the Commission shall deem relevant.” Of particular relevance is the preamble to the Act creating the commission, which recites in part that “the technical aspects of the Bankruptcy Act are interwoven with the rapid expansion of credit which has reached proportions far beyond anything previously experienced by the citizens of the United States.”
The report of the commission is to be submitted prior to June 30, 1973. Pub. L. 92-251, 86 Stat. 63.