Professor Kara Bruce has capped a strong year of scholarly recognition, winning the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) Call for Papers competition for 2026 and being elected to the American Law Institute, one of the legal profession’s most prestigious honorary organizations. 

Bruce’s winning paper, “Bankrupt Crypto Organizations,” tackles a novel question of bankruptcy law: what happens when a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, an entity that replaces traditional corporate governance with blockchain-based structures, goes broke? The paper is coauthored with Professor Christopher Odinet of Texas A&M University School of Law and Professor Andrea Tosato of SMU Dedman School of Law. 

The project began almost by accident. Bruce and her coauthors had already written on crypto insolvency when they were asked to contribute a book chapter on DAO insolvency. She expected it to be a short detour while she packed up to join the Carolina Law faculty. Instead, the questions kept multiplying, and the chapter became the seed of a much larger project. 

What kept her interested was the mindset behind DAOs, not just their mechanics. They are built on an anarchist-style resistance to centralized authority, designed to run entirely off the legal grid. Bruce and her coauthors mapped out how such an organization might actually respond to financial distress: opt into existing bankruptcy law, get pushed there by its own stakeholders, or try to invent an entirely new version of bankruptcy from within the DAO itself. 

“Commercial law is an area of law that is easy to overlook in favor of flashier topics,” Bruce said. “Although our research discusses new technology, the legal issues involved are foundational.  The SEALS award is an important recognition of how central commercial law concepts are to our legal system, and how important it is that we focus on them both in law school and in legal practice.” 

Bruce brings that same conviction to her work with the ABA Task Force on Commercial Law in Legal Education, which is working to keep commercial law courses from quietly disappearing off law school curricula nationwide. 

Bruce and her coauthors will present the paper on a dedicated panel at the SEALS Annual Conference, held July 26 through August 1 at the Omni Amelia Island Resort in Florida, with Professor Ronald Rychlak of the University of Mississippi School of Law moderating. 

“Kara’s work on bankruptcy law and crypto is a perfect example of legal scholarship helping existing frameworks apply to emergent technologies,” said Dean Andy Hessick. “It grapples with such an important and timely question. Kara’s recognition at SEALS is a great reflection of the scholarship coming out of Carolina Law.”