Prof. Melissa B. Jacoby

Prof. Melissa B. Jacoby is the Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and served as the Sullivan & Cromwell Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School in the fall of 2024. She is the author of the book Unjust Debts: How Our Bankruptcy System Makes America More Unequal (The New Press June 2024, audiobook Tantor Media February 2025), named as a Financial Times best economics book in the summer of 2024, and she has written more than 50 articles, essays and other writings. She also has testified before House and Senate committees of Congress on various aspects of debtor/creditor law. Prof. Jacoby is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the American College of Bankruptcy and the National Bankruptcy Conference, as well as the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers. She has won awards for teaching, service and scholarship, including the Grant Gilmore Award for Superior Writing in the Field of Commercial Finance from the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers and the Association of American Law Schools Commercial and Consumer Law Section. From 2021-24, appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts, Prof. Jacoby helped develop educational programming for judges through the Federal Judicial Center. Previously, she clerked for Hon. Robert E. Ginsberg of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and later for Hon. Marjorie O. Rendell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. She taught at Temple University for four years before joining the UNC faculty. Prof. Jacoby received both her B.A. and J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.