The Virtual Chancery Court--Course Description

Virtual Chancery Court: Course Description

The Virtual Chancery Court will proceed according to the following plan:

Students at participating law schools will organize themselves into "courts," with each court consisting of at least three students (the exact number of students required to constitute a court is left to the discretion of the faculty supervisor).

During the semester, each court will render opinions in ten hypothetical cases distributed by Professors Smith and Hamermesh through the Virtual Chancery Court home page. See "Student Materials." In writing the opinions, students are not allowed to cite actual statutes or court decisions as authority. Instead students are bound only by the language of statutes provided by Professors Smith and Hamermesh (the statutory provisions provided will be modeled after provisions in the Delaware General Corporation Law), by a general statement of fiduciary duties (taken from Guth v. Loft, Inc., 5 A.2d 503, 510 (Del. 1939)), and by any precedent that the students create in deciding the cases throughout the semester (in other words, students must use their early opinions as precedent in subsequent cases). For more detailed information, see "Student Instructions."

Although the general incorporation statute is modeled after the Delaware General Corporation Law and the general statement of fiduciary duties is taken from Guth v. Loft, a Delaware case, students will be asked to approach each hypothetical case independently and to develop their own line of legal precedent. For purposes of the course, each court is considered a separate jurisdiction, whose opinions may serve as persuasive but not binding authority on other courts participating in the course. To provide all students access to the decisions of each court, electronic copies of all opinions must be posted to the World Wide Web at the students' home law school no later than two days following issuance of the opinions. A link to each court's opinions will be provided on the "Student Opinions" page.

Students may discuss the hypothetical cases with each other using the Virtual Chancery Court's Internet discussion list. All students enrolled in the course must subscribe to the discussion list, and faculty supervisors may subscribe.