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Is the Delaware Chancery Court Specialized?

David Zarig doesn’t think so:

I’ve been feeling a bit guilty since July, when I speculated that the Delaware Chancery Court might only devote 15% of its docket to corporate law issues. Better versed Delawareans than I wrote in that the number seemed to them more like 60-70%. And that’s why we love the internet. But still, I have to think about my honor. While the majority number must be the right one in all the important ways (maybe those are the cases up in Wilmington, that get a lot of court time, and so on), I’ll note that – according to a footnote in a paper recently consumed hereabouts (it’s not out yet, or I’d name authors) - in 2002, the Chancery Court disposed of 3,525 cases, 2,183 of which involved estates, 440 guardianships, 38 “other matters” and 52 trusts. That leaves 902 cases that might be assumed to be corporate. Which is, I’ll have you know, 26% of the cases.

But number of cases isn’t the right metric. When I was a federal district court law clerk many years ago, Social Security appeals and habeas petitions comprised maybe 40% of our docket in terms of the number of cases. But my judge could dispose of those cases at an astonishing rate. He’d take a stack home at night and come back the next morning with a portable dictaphone full of dictated orders. The right metric is how much time the Chancellors spend on each category. Also, of course, there’s the difficult to measure factor of incentives to specialize. Even if corporate law were a small part of the docket, it’s where Delaware Chancellors earn all their psychic income. Delaware Chancellors don’t get law professor groupies, among other things, for deciding estate cases. The natural human incentive would be to develop specialized human capital in the areas where they get the greatest nonpecuniary benefits. Right?