Delaware Chief Justice Emphasizes Independence, Like His Father

Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. learned about the power of an independent judiciary at his childhood dinner table, decades before hearing appeals from powerful CEOs and majority shareholders.

That’s where Seitz Jr.’s father recounted how he defied 1950s public opinion with decisions ordering integration for Delaware public schools. Those Chancery Court rulings still form the root of Delaware judges’ willingness to take a long-term view even when that’s unpopular, the chief justice said in an interview.

“When you have these superstar CEO cases and you have controversial decisions coming out, the independence of the judiciary is so important,” he said. “The Court of Chancery is all the time trying to do what the judges think is just and equitable and not necessarily bowing to the momentary pressures of the day.”

He cited his father’s steadfastness at Tulane University’s annual corporate governance conference in April, to quell concerns about Delaware’s long-admired predictability, according to a transcript published by The M&A Journal. Recent decisions breaking new ground over controlling shareholders, corporate bylaws, reincorporation, and Elon Musk’s CEO pay package at Tesla Inc. have prompted some corporate litigators to worry Chancery Court judges are changing too much, and too fast.

“What courage,” he said of Collins J. Seitz Sr., remembering his father as “fearless” but “never braggy” about the rulings he made as vice chancellor and then as chief judge of the Chancery Court. Seitz Sr. later served as chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Gov. John Carney (D) tapped Seitz Jr. in 2019 for a 12-year term as the high court’s chief justice and head of Delaware’s judicial branch. Since then, he’s pushed to open access to a bench and bar that’s faced criticism for its lack of diversity.

Making History

The history of the Delaware Chancery Court is paved with novel rulings, whether they’re local disputes like the school integration cases or the recent opinions that have challenged some corporate expectations, Seitz Jr., 66, said.

“There’s always a period of difficulty where there’s adaptation occurring, but eventually everything settles out, until the next big thing comes along—which might be artificial intelligence,” he said.

Seitz Jr. recently portrayed his father in a re-enactment of key testimony in a Chancery Court lawsuit where Seitz Sr. found racial discrimination in Delaware schools to be unlawful and ordered integration for all-White schools. The only precedent he had to follow was his own prior decision prohibiting the University of Delaware from denying admission to Black students. Of the five cases consolidated into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, Seitz Sr.’s ruling was the only one affirmed by the US Supreme Court.

“At a time when the political and legal elite of Delaware implemented the oppressive sophistry of ‘separate but equal,’ Chancellor Seitz used his powers as an equity judge to do two things in combination that no American judge had ever done,” said Joel Friedlander of Friedlander & Gorris, who explored how the US Supreme Court ultimately endorsed more gradual desegregation for the Delaware Law Review last year.

Seitz Sr. understood he had the power to set precedent, and that’s a lesson for a judiciary increasingly confronted by a citizenry that believes justice is something easily bought, said Anton House, a Delaware State University professor. His “scruples and the fortitude that he had to say, against the prevailing winds at the time, ‘I’m going to do the right thing because this is what our legal documents say,’” shows an understanding of the law that many now perceive to be lost.

Early Education

Seitz Jr. has prioritized diversifying Delaware’s judiciary and legal community to better reflect the state’s population. In a recent report, the high court detailed the steps it’s implementing to increase the number of non-White judges and promote diversity-based recruitment by the state attorney general’s office and major law firms.

Key to that effort, he said, is capturing the attention of young students in the way his dinnertime conversations with his father helped him see himself as a future lawyer. The plan includes teaching about the law in civics classes as early as fourth grade.

“We show people what lawyers and judges do, and show them that it’s possible for them to have a career in the law,” he said.

Seitz Jr. graduated from the University of Delaware before earning his law degree from Villanova University. He litigated corporate, commercial, and intellectual property cases in private practice before his nomination to the Delaware Supreme Court in 2015.

The chief justice recalls that sometimes at the dinner table, Seitz Sr. had to win over his wife, who preferred less heady family chats. “My mother was not a lawyer, and dinner conversations were always around the law, and I can tell you one thing—my mother got sick of it,” he said.

But those discussions made such an impression that three of the family’s four children followed Seitz Sr. into legal careers; his daughter, Virginia Seitz, served as US assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Obama administration.

In budget requests to Delaware’s lawmakers, Seitz Jr. has argued for something his father didn’t have: a work-life balance. Seitz Sr. “had a love affair with the law” but it was his wife’s support who helped him spend 50 years on the bench, the chief justice said. He’s asked for additional court staff and other resources to lighten the caseload at Chancery Court.

“Delaware and America’s love affair with the Court of Chancery poses a bit of a burden on being a judge there, if you want to have a personal life,” Seitz Jr. said. “But the judges over there, they love what they do, and they’re good at it. I would say my father would be very proud of them.”