Crystals, Mud, BAPCPA, and the Structure of Bankruptcy Decisionmaking

As a real estate professor, I tend to focus on bankruptcy only as it intersects with mortgage law and Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Thus, I feel somewhat out of my element as a commenter in this symposium, and my observations may be suspect coming from a bankruptcy "outsider." But as an outside observer, it seems troublesome that bankruptcy's dispute resolution system - and particularly its multiple layers of appellate review - has always been so poorly designed to produce doctrinal clarity. And even if BAPCPA does resolve a number of specific legal issues that have bedeviled the system, it does not sufficiently address this broader structural problem