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- Title
CORPUS LINGUISTICS AND STUDENT LOAN DEBT.
- Authors
WOODS, KYRA BABCOCK
- Abstract
An American college degree is both elite and very expensive. Thus, with the average annual tuition list price hovering in the tens of thousands of dollars, large swaths of students are forced to take out student loans to fund their educations. Unfortunately, unpredictable job opportunities resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic require each student loan debtor to ask: How do I pay my loans back? The bankruptcy code, found under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(8), offers student loan debtors an opportunity to discharge their loans--provided they can show that repayment will inflict "undue hardship." There is currently a shallow circuit split over undue hardship's meaning. The majority view found in the Second Circuit's Brunner decision rarely permits discharge under section 523(a)(8), essentially requiring debtors to prove complete destitution.1 Conversely, the minority view under the Eighth Circuit's Long decision is more lenient, merely requiring the court to balance various factors on a case-by-case basis.2 Neither scholars nor members of the judiciary agree over how strict or lax Congress intended undue hardship to be. This Article proposes a new method of statutory interpretation to demystify undue hardship: legal corpus linguistics (LCL), or the use of large, naturally-occurring bodies of text to understand how different language communities understand legal language. In conducting an LCL analysis, this Article addresses four matters. First, it explores the history of consumer bankruptcy and student loan debt under section 523(a)(8). Second, it tackles America's student loan debt problems and discusses how they pair with Brunner and Long. Third, it discusses LCL in-depth as a method of legal interpretation. And finally, it conducts an LCL analysis on undue hardship--demonstrating that the ordinary legal and lay meaning of undue hardship is a hybrid of both Brunner and Long. Ultimately, this Article aims to demonstrate LCL's feasibility, and show that student loan debtors are entitled to an easier way out from under the load.
- Subjects
UNITED States Code; STUDENT loan debt; CORPORA; STUDENT loans; PERSONAL bankruptcy; LEGAL language
- Publication
Boston University Public Interest Law Journal, 2022, Vol 31, p203
- ISSN
1077-0615
- Publication type
Article