Melissa B. Jacoby

Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor of Law, Emerita

Email
mjacoby@unc.edu
Social
@melissabjacoby
Curriculum Vitae Download Photo Website

Areas of Expertise

  • Bankruptcy Law
  • Commercial Law
  • Contracts
  • Law and Social Sciences
  • Secured Transactions

Biography

Melissa B. Jacoby teaches and studies commercial law and bankruptcy law and their intersections with other fields. Jacoby has been elected to the American Law Institute, the National Bankruptcy Conference, the American College of Bankruptcy, and the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers, and has served as the Robert M. Zinman Scholar for the American Bankruptcy Institute. She is a recipient of the Grant Gilmore Award for scholarship from the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers and the Byrd Award for teaching, among other honors. Jacoby’s book Unjust Debts, published by The New Press on June 11, 2024, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was named one of the Financial Times’ best summer economics books for 2024. In 2021, Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts appointed Jacoby to assist the Federal Judicial Center on educational programming and, in 2025, reappointed Jacoby for a second three-year term. In Fall 2024, Jacoby was the Sullivan & Cromwell Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School.
Before joining the faculty at UNC, Jacoby taught at Temple University in Philadelphia. She held judicial clerkships with the Honorable Robert E. Ginsberg of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the Honorable Marjorie O. Rendell of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and was a staff attorney for the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. Jacoby holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, as well as from Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences, where she was a history major.

Selected Publications

23andMe's Bankruptcy Raises Concerns About Privacy in the Era of Big Data (with S. Gerke and G. Cohen) BRIT. MED. J. (2025). 
Document Link

Bankruptcy, Genetic Information, and Privacy  (with S. Gerke and I. G. Cohen) , 392 N.E. J. MED. (Mar. 1, 2025). 
Document Link

UNJUST DEBTS: HOW OUR BANKRUPTCY SYSTEM MAKES AMERICA MORE UNEQUAL  (The New Press, 2024).
KF1501 .J33 2024

Fake and Real People in Bankruptcy, 39 EMORY BANKR. DEV. J. 497 (2023).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Sorting Bugs and Features of Mass Tort Bankruptcy, 101 TEX. L. REV. 1745 (2023).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein

Unbundling Business Bankruptcy Law, 101 N.C. L. REV. 1703 (2023).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Other Judges' Cases, 78 NYU ANN. SURV. AM. L. 39 (2022).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Shocking Business Bankruptcy Law, 131 YALE L.J. FORUM 409 (2021).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress | Document Link

Consumer Protection After a Global Financial Crisis (with E. Balleisen), 107 GEO. L.J. 813 (2019).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

Corporate Bankruptcy Hybridity, 166 U. PA. L. REV. 1715 (2018).
Westlaw | Lexis/Nexis | SSRN | Hein | BEPress

SSRN Author Page

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