Delaware Chief Justice Leo Strine to Deliver Winter Lecture

Leo Strine, Jr., Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, will deliver the 2015–16 Judge Ralph K. Winter Lecture on Corporate Law and Governance on October 13, 2015, at 4:30 pm in the Faculty Lounge.

Read "Corporate Power Ratchet: The Courts’ Role in Eroding ‘We the People’s’ Ability to Constrain our Corporate Creations," the paper on which Strine's lecture was based.

Watch a video of the lecture.

Chief Justice Strine’s lecture is entitled “Corporate Power Ratchet: The Courts’ Role in Eroding ‘We the People’s’ Ability to Constrain Our Corporate Creations.” He will discuss the directional thrust of recent federal jurisprudence, which has increased the power of corporations to influence the electoral and regulatory process, diminished the ability of human citizens to constrain corporations in the public interest, and reduced the practical ability of Congress and executive agencies to adopt and implement externality regulations and new social welfare regulation. The Chief Justice contends that “the effect has been to alter the relationship between society and the corporations that it has created.”

Before becoming the Chief Justice, Strine was the Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery. The Chief Justice has authored highly influential opinions, including recent decisions reworking the law of freezeouts and validating a private ordering approach to resolving multiforum litigation. He lectures frequently on corporate law and governance and has authored numerous articles on those topics. On a number of occasions, his articles have been selected as among the Best Corporate and Securities Articles of the year, based on an annual survey of legal scholars.

Chief Justice Strine holds adjunct teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt, and UCLA law schools and is the Austin Wakeman Scott Lecturer in Law at Harvard Law School. He also serves as a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance and as the special judicial consultant to the ABA’s Committee on Corporate Laws.

Immediately before becoming a member of the Court of Chancery, Chief Justice Strine was Counsel to Governor Thomas R. Carper of the State of Delaware. He was a corporate litigator at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and a law clerk to Judge Walter K. Stapleton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and Chief Judge John F. Gerry of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey. The Chief Justice graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and was selected as a member of the Order of the Coif. He received his Bachelor’s Degree summa cum laude from the University of Delaware.

The Winter Lecture is sponsored by the Dean’s Office and the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law. The Judge Ralph K. Winter Lectureship on Corporate Law and Governance was established by former law clerks and students of Judge Winter to support lectures on corporate law and governance and related topics.