Biography
E. NORMAN VEASEY is a former Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, having served a 12-year term from April 1992 through May 2004. After his retirement from the Supreme Court, he was a Senior Partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, until the end of 2013. He joined the Wilmington law firm of Gordon, Fournaris & Mammarella, P.A. (GFM) in January 2014. At GFM, he serves as an arbitrator, mediator, special master, counsellor, expert witness, as well as providing other services in complex corporate, contract, and commercial transactions and litigation.
During his tenure as Chief Justice, and thereafter, the United States Chamber of Commerce ranked Delaware’s courts first in the nation for their fair, reasonable, and efficient litigation environment. Chief Justice Veasey has been credited with leading nationwide programs to restore professionalism to the practice of law and to adopt best practices in the running of America’s courts.
He was President of the Conference of Chief Justices, Chair of the board of the National Center for State Courts, Chair of the Section of Business Law of the American Bar Association (ABA), Chair of the ABA Special Commission on Evaluation of the Rules of Professional Conduct (Ethics 2000), Chair of the Committee on Corporate Laws of the ABA Section of Business Law, and President of the Delaware State Bar Association.
Chief Justice Veasey is the co-author, with Christine Di Guglielmo, of a book, published by Oxford University Press, on the challenges of modern-day corporate general counsel. The book is entitled, E. Norman Veasey & Christine T. Di Guglielmo, Indispensable Counsel: The Chief Legal Officer in the New Reality (2012). The Wall Street Journal called it “a field manual to aid [chief legal officers] with their new tasks.” (March 9, 2012)
He is a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers (a member of the Alternative Dispute Resolution and Complex Litigation Committees); a Fellow and honorary founding Chair of the American College of Governance Counsel; included in Best Lawyers in America; a director of the Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania; a member of the American Law Institute; a member of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for Corporate Law and Securities Regulation; a frequent panelist and lecturer on the corporation law, corporate governance, ethics, and professionalism.
He has served as an Adjunct Professor at various law schools where he has taught a course entitled, “The Real World of Ethical Corporate Lawyering,” a subject on which he has lectured at several law and business schools, including Cornell Law School and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He has served as an Adjunct Professor teaching this course at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, New York University School of Law, the University of Virginia School of Law, Wake Forest University School of Law, Dedman School of Law of Southern Methodist University, and the Moritz School of Law of Ohio State University. He appears often as a writer and speaker on various topics including alternate dispute resolution, corporate governance, and professional responsibility.