The Historical Foundation of Bankruptcy European Law: Restructuring and Second Chance Policy

This paper focuses on the historical affirmation of a distinguished treatment between the unfortunate entrepreneur and the fraudulent one and of the legal tools for resolving entrepreneurs' crisis, reconciling restructuring and second chance with the rights of creditors. Here are some suggestions, which will be deepened in a future monographic work. The idea behind this study is that in Roman sources and in the thought of Benvenuto Stracca (as in other relevant treatise authors) there are-unlike what has been thought in doctrine for a long time 1-the roots of the desirable overcoming of the idea and presumption that the insolvent entrepreneur is always a defrauder.