Skip to main content

Wilmington Attorney J. Travis Laster Appointed to the Delaware Court of Chancery

I have known Travis Laster for over a decade, in both professional and personal settings. We met in 1998 when he was an associate at Richards, Layton & Finger and I was working there as a summer associate. [Several years ago Travis and Kevin Abrams left RL&F to form their own corporate litigation boutique firm Abrams & Laster.]

I also had the opportunity while clerking for (then)-Vice-Chancellor Myron Steele to see Travis at work litigating before the court.

The News-Journal now reports on Travis's nomination to the Delaware Court of Chancery :

Laster nominated to Court of Chancery

By MAUREEN MILFORD - The News Journal

J. Travis Laster, a 39-year-old Wilmington corporate lawyer, has been nominated by Gov. Jack Markell for the vacant seat on Delaware’s prestigious Court of Chancery.

“Travis Laster has spent his career litigating in front of the Court of Chancery and has developed an outstanding reputation for his intelligence and integrity,” Markell said.

Laster, a partner with Abrams & Laster, was selected out of an initial field of about seven candidates who applied for the seat left vacant when Stephen P. Lamb retired in July after his 12-year term expired.
“I am honored to be nominated by Governor Markell,” Laster said in a statement. “I have profound respect for the Court of Chancery and for the many jurists who have given that court its national reputation for excellence. If confirmed, I hope to contribute to the court’s tradition.”
Under the Delaware Constitution, Markell must submit a name to the Senate within 60 days after the seat becomes vacant. The Senate is expected to reconvene in September and hold a confirmation vote then.


Travis has an outstanding and comprehensive grasp of the countless nuances of Delaware's corporate laws and jurisprudence, having helped shape many of them over the last 13+ years during which he became a premiere corporate litigator.

He also has an exceedingly just and even-handed temperament accompanying his extensive knowledge and experience as a Chancery litigator.

Laster is a superlative choice to replace Stephen Lamb on the Court of Chancery and I roundly commend Governor Markell's wise decision.

As a member of the Delaware Bar, it is highly reassuring to know that the Court will soon have an attorney of Travis's caliber on its bench.

Given Travis's sterling reputation and track record I am confident his nomination will be unanimously confirmed by the Delaware Senate, and I urge all Senators to vote in the affirmative.

[On a personal note, Travis's life accomplishments are even more impressive given his age of 39! But it also has me (at nearly 38) beginning to feel a bit old. I guess when one's contemporaries begin becoming judges, the feeling is inevitable.]

Best of luck to Travis in his confirmation and eventual tenure on the nation's #1 court for high-stakes and complex corporate dispute resolution!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...