PHILADELPHIA The University of Pennsylvania Law School is bolstering its expanding corporate law program with the creation of the S. Samuel Arsht Professorship.

The endowed chair in corporate law was created through a gift of $2 million from retired Delaware Judge Roxana Cannon Arsht in memory of her husband.

S. Samuel Arsht, who died in 1999, was a 1931 graduate of Penn Wharton School and a 1934 graduate of the Law School. He was a partner of Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell in Wilmington, Dela. Arsht joined the firm upon graduating from Penn Law School in 1934. He was well known in corporate law circles as one of the architects of modern Delaware General Corporation law. In 1949, he served as chairman and editor-in-chief of the three-man Revised Code Commission charged with overhauling and updating the entire body of Delaware statutory law. Facing a 1935 Delaware Code rooted in the outmoded Code of 1915, the end result of the commission three-year effort was the benchmark Delaware Code of 1953.

Later in his career, Arsht was an influential member of the drafting task force of the Corporation Law Revision Committee that resulted in a massive overhaul of Delaware General Corporation Law in 1967.

Judge Roxana Cannon Arsht is a graduate of Penn Law School Class of 1939. She is retired from the Family Court bench of the State of Delaware and holds the distinction of being Delaware first female judge.

In 1992, Judge Arsht and Mr. Arsht jointly received the University of Pennsylvania Law Alumni Society Alumni Award of Merit in recognition of their "inspiring dedication to professionalism and excellence."