James Travis Laster is an American corporate lawyer and judge who has served as a Vice Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery since 2009.

[6][12][13][14] In United Food & Commercial Workers Union v. Zuckerberg, a 2020 lawsuit challenging the approval by the board of directors of Facebook, Inc. of a stock reclassification plan, Vice Chancellor Laster proposed a "refined test" for assessing whether a stockholder derivative plaintiff has satisfied the heightened pleading standards of Court of Chancery Rule 23.1.

[17] Derivative suits thus "play an important role in policing corporate insider conduct and compliance by directors and controlling stockholders with their fiduciary duties.

[20] The buyer, MAPS Hotels and Resorts One LLC, an affiliate of Mirae Asset Financial Group, contended that the seller, AB Stable VIII LLC, an affiliate of Anbang Insurance Group, violated a covenant to operate its hotel business in the ordinary course of business in the time between the signing of the merger agreement and the closing of the transaction.

[21] Laster held that by making "extensive changes to its business because of COVID-19, such as employee layoffs, furloughs and closing amenities," Anbang violated the ordinary course covenant, entitling Mirae to walk away from the $5.8 billion transaction.

[22] Vice Chancellor Laster has published numerous scholarly articles and regularly appears as a speaker on topics related to corporate law and the legal profession.

[37] In a 2022 speech given to a group of law students and entitled "Big Law Ethics,"[38] Vice Chancellor Laster offered insights into ethical lapses by lawyers in several prominent cases he decided in recent years, including the Akorn and AB Stable cases.