Randy Picker died on August 15, 2026. Randy will forever be a University of Chicago legend, a three-time alum, beloved professor, and, this summer, named to one of the most challenging roles a modern university offers: Vice Provost for Academic Affairs. Randy has been an academic superstar in multiple doctrinal fields, including competition policy/antitrust and intellectual property, as well as in methodologies such as game theory. This Credit Slips tribute emphasizes his contributions to the fields of bankruptcy and commercial law.
I met Randy in the 1990s as Congress expanded and intensified its aspirations for bankruptcy reform, and got to watch him testify before Congress several times on behalf of the National Bankruptcy Conference. Randy had been the reporter for the National Bankruptcy Conference’s exhaustive review of the Bankruptcy Code published in 1994 and again in 1997 – a monumental undertaking on many metrics, and one that has influenced policy discussions in the intervening decades. By the time I met him, Randy was well-recognized for his bankruptcy scholarship, including co-authoring one of the best known articles on municipal bankruptcy. At a March 1999 House Judiciary Committee hearing, he was given a tough assignment: to explain why a securitization provision in the bill, touted as a no-brainer by its advocates, was problematic. Here is an excerpt of his testimony at the March 1999 hearing:
The problem is that with regard to securitizations, understanding when you have a true sale and when you don’t turns out to be really hard…. The statute has taken what I would regard as what I think of as a deemed-tiger approach to solving this problem, and what I mean by that is as follows: I think of my 5-year-old son, Adam, walking into the room with his pink stuffed elephant and saying, here’s my tiger. I assume that would get some quizzical looks, right? We’d all look at Adam and say, you know, that’s an elephant, not a tiger. He would say, no, I’ve deemed it to be a tiger, and because I’ve deemed it to be a tiger, it’s therefore a tiger. Well, that’s exactly what this legislation does. If you look at the approach to a definition of transfer on page 286 of H.R. 833, and in particular line 10, a debtor who represents and warrants that a sale is a sale makes it a sale. All you have to do is say it’s a sale. You represent and warrant it’s a sale and you’re done. Well we have never in the history of commercial transactions law relied on the characterization of the parties to the transaction to determine what that transaction is, when it will have third party consequences. Do understand that asset securitization will have third party consequences.
(Find his full verbal and written testimony starting on page 355).
Even as other fields and projects consumed more of his time and attention, Randy continued service to the field of bankruptcy, including recently as Vice-Chair of the National Bankruptcy Conference.
Randy’s commitment to and appreciation of state commercial law also has a long pedigree. He served as a Uniform Law Commissioner (then called the National Conference of Uniform Law Commissioners, or NCCUSL) at a pivotal time, when Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code was being significantly overhauled. He wrote pathbreaking scholarship about secured credit that should inspire more such work now. Throughout his academic career, Randy continued to teach secured transactions with enthusiasm and rave reviews, to the benefit of students and the legal profession.
Speaking of courses, Randy lived the truth that passion about teaching and scholarly inquiry are mutually reinforcing rather than in opposition. Indeed, Randy was a pedagogical trailblazer. Did I even know what a MOOC was before overhearing Randy mention starting one? When COVID shutdown necessitated remote learning, he created more opportunities for learning and engagement, including taking Zoom’s potential to whole other levels with a remarkable summer seminar for alumni. And he contributed to the education of business school students as well as his law school teaching.
One last point: Randy was generous with people with no connection with the University of Chicago, with no particular aptitude for game theory or computer simulations (or improv, for that matter). I am such a person. Both early in my career and later, I sought his counsel on academic and professional things. He made time for me and was always constructive. That invisible professional service – whether it reflects kindness or social welfare maximization – is worth discussing out loud, and paying forward.
Deepest condolences to Randy Picker’s family. He will remain an inspiration.
It’s publication day for my new book, Forgive Us Our Debts: How Black Churches Use Bankruptcy to Survive. If you were to pick up a copy, its back begins, “When American churches face financial difficulties, a disproportionately high number of Black churches reorganize under chapter 11 bankruptcy.” That is true, based on my research of the over 1,000 religious organizations that filed chapter 11 between 2006 and 2021. Over 60% of the churches that filed were Black churches. Forgive Us Our Debts is about why this is so, and why Black churches are so successful in reorganizing. The book weaves together detailed stories of seven churches that filed chapter 11, supplemented with aggregated data. Forgive Us Our Debts tells a story of salvation through the reorganization system, which brings churches’ lenders to the negotiating table. But the salvation is bittersweet because the time and expense of reorganization seemingly should not have needed for many of the churches to get the deals they deserved. In delving into churches’ reorganizations, I found a story of disparities in credit markets, both at loan origination and during times of trouble. At its core, Forgive Us Our Debts is about lending to Black-owned businesses, Black communities, and the attempted extraction of wealth. I wrote the book so that it can be picked up by a pastor or someone who oversees a church, by attorneys, or by anyone interested in lending and race and community development.
