The ''fresh start'' that is afforded individual debtors through the discharge doctrines of American bankruptcy law has, to date, defied justification by a single normative principle or theoretical paradigm. The justificatory accounts that have been advanced either fail to explain core doctrines that have long defined the right of discharge or invite theoretical challenges that suggest that their descriptive virtues are swamped by their normative or conceptual shortcomings. This book presents a taxonomy of traditional justifications of bankruptcy and subjects them to critical evaluation. It then seeks to offer a new justification of bankruptcy''s ''fresh start'' doctrines-one that takes its inspiration from a quite different moral tradition than those that have informed past efforts to justify and explain our enduring societal willingness to release people from onerous financial obligations. The book argues that personal debt relief is fully vindicated not by a utilitarian theory, nor b