Have bankrupts committed a mortal wrongdoing? The fundamental ethical problem in bankruptcy is that insolvents have promised to pay their debts but can not keep their promise. "The Ethics of Bankruptcy" examines the morality of bankruptcy. The author explores ethical concerns raised by forgiveness, utilitarianism and distributive justice and the moral aspects of insolvents' contractual, fiduciary, tortious and criminal liability. This is the first comprehensive study that employs the tools of ethics to examine the controversies surrounding insolvency, which makes valuable and sometimes controversial reading in a decade recovering from the Recession. This text compares and contrasts the Humean doctrine of promises as useful conventions with the Kantian view of autonomous agency constituting promissory obligations. Finally, the author assesses recent bankruptcy law reforms, examining British and European modes of dealing with bankruptcy as opposed to American methods.