In Re Lightsey’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 13 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “If non-dischargeability was the standard for a special circumstance, Congress would have said so. Those courts concluding that “special circumstances” include non-dischargeable student loan obligations arguably will have to apply this standard to every other non-dischargea-ble obligation, [including] debts arising not only from student loans but also from fraud, embezzlement, DUI, and the like. See 11 U.S.C. §§ 523 and 1328(a). Every one of these non-dischargeable obligations could qualify as debts for which a debtor has no reasonable alternative but to continue payments to avoid economic harm, and there is no suggestion in Section 707(b)(2)(B) that courts have been delegated the policy decision of deciding that some non-dischargeable debts are “good” and some are “bad” so as to permit treating some but not all as a “special circumstance.””

   1 later decision quote this exact passage
   e.g. In re Maura