Complete preemption is a jurisdictional doctrine in which a federal statute so wholly envelops certain state law claims that those claims effectively cease to exist. Aside from an explicit complete preemption hook, the Supreme Court has recognized just one way for a federal statute to completely preempt state law claims: it must provide an exclusive federal remedy and also have a special nature that makes it extra federal. In this Comment, Ryan Jain-Liu tracks the historical evolution of U.S. bankruptcy to make this second showing. In doing so, this Comment observes two entwined trends in the history of U.S. bankruptcy: bankruptcy simultaneously became more remedial—and thus more voluntary—as the federal government asserted increased control over bankruptcy law. The dual developments toward bankruptcy-as-remedy and bankruptcy-as-federal combine to provide involuntary debtors special protection and to give involuntary bankruptcy a special federal nature. Finally, this Comment expands on the case study of involuntary bankruptcy to argue that historical evolution can form the basis for recognizing an area of law’s special federal nature and support application of the complete preemption doctrine to novel contexts.
June
2026