The Sixteenth Annual Albert A. DeStefano Lecture on Corporate, Securities & Financial Law at the Fordham Corporate Law Center

Welcome and Introductory RemarksSEAN GRIFFITH: Welcome, everyone. My name is Sean Griffith. I am the T.J. Maloney Chair in Corporate Law and the Director of the Fordham Corporate Law Center. It is my job to welcome you here tonight and to give you a two-minute introduction to who we are and what we do, and then to welcome our speaker for the evening. We are the Fordham Corporate Law Center. I like to say that we are the thinktank that Fordham has organized around corporate and securities law issues. We like to bring together three different types of audiences: we organize events for students to give them the opportunity to learn about different areas of business and corporate practice; we like to organize events for our scholars here at Fordham to bring together academics and policymakers on important research questions; and we like to bring together the public with high-profile public speakers on issues of great importance. I am happy to say that tonight we have managed to bring together all three of those groups for a very exciting lecture by Chancellor Bouchard.This is the Albert A. DeStefano Lecture. It is a lecture that was created in 2001 in honor of Albert A. DeStefano, a former partner at Becker & Ross who specialized in corporate matters, especially MA in 2014, former Chief Justice Steele gave the DeStefano lecture; and last year, we had a panel of eminent Delaware practitioners to discuss the issue of shifting with us, an important issue in Delaware corporate law.Tonight, we have the Chancellor himself. I am pleased to introduce the Honorable Andre G. Bouchard, who was sworn in as Chancellor of the Court of Chancery on May 5, 2014. Before his appointment, Chancellor Bouchard spent twenty-eight years in private practice in Wilmington, Delaware, including as the managing partner of Bouchard Margules & Friedlander, Professional Association, a corporate and commercial litigation boutique that he founded. Before starting his own firm, Chancellor Bouchard served as a litigator at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Chancellor Bouchard received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1986 and a bachelor's, summa cum laude, from Boston College in 1983, where he was the recipient of the Edward H. Finnegan Award. He was selected as a Harry S. Truman Scholar from Delaware in 1981, and he has been a past Chairman of the Judicial Nominating Commission, a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, and a member of The American Law Institute.Without any further ado, Chancellor Bouchard.LECTURECHANCELLOR BOUCHARD: Thank you for having me tonight. And thank you, Sean, for the very nice introduction. I never knew I would get a hundred people in a room to talk about disclosure settlements. That is a big surprise to me. As Sean said, I have been the Chancellor now for just about two years. I became Chancellor on May 5, 2014. I will start by saying that it is very different than being somebody who runs for political office. When you run for political office, you have an agenda you define to do something proactive. Being a judge is very reactive. You do not know what issues you are going to have, you do not know what kind of cases you are going to get. It is just random, whatever hits the lot.Notwithstanding that fact, every once in a while some case comes along that gives you the chance to do something more proactive, something more prescriptive, something that can actually change the direction of the law, or the direction of practice. …