Leo E. Strine, Jr.

Of Counsel, Wachtell, Lipton Rosen & Katz; Former Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court

Leo E. Strine, Jr., is Of Counsel in the Corporate Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.  Prior to joining the firm, he was the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court from early 2014 through late 2019.  Before becoming the Chief Justice, he had served on the Delaware Court of Chancery as Chancellor since June 22, 2011, and as a Vice Chancellor since November 9, 1998.

In his judicial positions, Mr. Strine wrote hundreds of opinions in the areas of corporate law, contract law, trusts and estates, criminal law, administrative law, and constitutional law.  Notably, he authored the lead decision in the Delaware Supreme Court case holding that Delaware’s death penalty statute was unconstitutional because it did not require the key findings necessary to impose a death sentence to be made by a unanimous jury.

Mr. Strine holds long-standing teaching positions at Harvard and University of Pennsylvania, where he has and continues to teach diverse classes in corporate law addressing, among other topics, mergers and acquisitions, the role of independent directors, valuation, and corporate law theories.  He is a member of the American Law Institute, and currently serves as an advisor on the project to create a restatement of corporate law.

Mr. Strine also serves as the Michael L. Wachter Distinguished Fellow in Law and Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, the Ira M. Millstein Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Ira M. Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School and a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance.  From 2006 to 2019, Mr. Strine served as the special judicial consultant to the ABA’s Committee on Corporate Laws.  He also was the special judicial consultant to the ABA’s Committee on Mergers & Acquisitions from 2014 to 2019.

Mr. Strine speaks and writes frequently on the subjects of corporate and public law, and particularly the impact of business on society, and his articles have been published in The University of Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Cornell Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Stanford Law Review, among others.  On several occasions, his articles were selected as among the Best Corporate and Securities Articles of the year, based on the choices of law professors.

Before becoming a judge in 1998, Strine served as Counsel and Policy Director to Governor Thomas R. Carper, and had also worked as a corporate litigator at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom from 1990 to 1992.  He was 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.  Mr. Strine graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1988, and was a member of the Order of the Coif.  In 1985, he received his Bachelor’s Degree summa cum laude from the University of Delaware and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a Truman Scholar.

In 2000, Governor Carper awarded Mr. Strine the Order of the First State.  In 2002, President David Roselle of the University of Delaware presented him with the University’s Presidential Citation for Outstanding Achievement.  In 2006, he was selected as a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute.  In 2019, he was awarded an honorary degree from Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland.

Mr. Strine lives in Hockessin, Delaware with his wife Carrie, who is an occupational therapist at the DuPont Hospital for Children, and his two sons, James and Benjamin.

**Admitted in Delaware.

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