The Delaware Judiciary has announced "the passing on Sunday of retired Chancellor William T. Allen, a giant of the corporate bar, academia, and the Delaware Bench."
“Our nation lost one of the finest jurists of the last fifty years yesterday,” said Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Leo E. Strine, Jr. “Chancellor Allen set a standard of excellence that made Delaware stand out in the eyes of all sophisticated observers. Bill Allen, the person, set a standard as a husband, father, friend, and caring professor to which we should all aspire. For me personally, he was a mentor, source of wisdom, and an inspiration. Everyone in Delaware owes him a debt of gratitude for what he did for our state, and our Judiciary’s hearts are with his wife and children, as they endure the loss of this special man.” ...
Chancellor Allen’s decisions, often produced under extreme time pressure, were known for their lucid and lively writing style and incisive analysis. His rulings also showed a deep concern for the integrity of the law, the need for those with power to use it with fidelity to those they represented, and for their understanding of scholarship relevant to the matters before the Court. For that reason, Chancellor Allen was considered to be one of the finest corporate law judges of the era and, even more broadly, as one of the finest judges of his generation on any court. ...
Chancellor Allen wrote hundreds of opinions related to corporate law during his time on the bench. Among the most notable were his iconic rulings in two corporate law cases. In Caremark, the Chancellor addressed the duty of corporate directors to monitor corporate legal compliance and called on corporate boards to recognize the duty of Delaware corporations to obey the law and act ethically toward society and the corporation’s stakeholders. And in the Blasius case, Chancellor Allen articulated a stringent standard of judicial review to make sure that corporate elections are conducted with scrupulous fairness and integrity.
As I have observed: "To paraphrase a television commercial of my youth, when Chancellor Allen speaks, people listen." Stephen M. Bainbridge, The Board of Directors As Nexus of Contracts, 88 Iowa L. Rev. 1, 33 (2002).
I only had the privilege of meeting him on one occasion. But I admired his skill and wisdom greatly, even on those rare times I disagreed with him.
