19 Facts About Clyde Summers

Clyde Wilson Summers was an American lawyer and educator who advocated for more democratic procedures in labor unions.

Clyde Summers helped write the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 and was highly influential in the field of labor law, authoring more than 150 publications on the issue of union democracy alone.

Clyde Summers was considered the nation's leading expert on union democracy.

Clyde Summers's parents were farmers, and the Summers family moved to Colorado; South Dakota; and Tecumseh, Nebraska, before settling in Winchester, Illinois, in 1929.

Clyde Summers attended high school in Winchester, and entered the University of Illinois at the age of 16.

Clyde Summers' brother had enlisted in the United States Army at the beginning of World War II.

Clyde Summers later was admitted to the New York State Bar Association.

Clyde Summers taught law at the University of Toledo from 1942 to 1945.

Clyde Summers earned a Master of Laws in 1946 and a Doctor of Science in law in 1952, both from Columbia University.

Clyde Summers taught law at the University of Buffalo from 1949 to 1956.

Clyde Summers taught law at Yale Law School from 1956 to 1975, but left after he felt marginalized by the faculty there.

Clyde Summers joined the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1975, where he was Jefferson B Fordham Professor of Law.

That same year, Clyde Summers drafted a "bill of rights for union members" for the ACLU.

The New York legislation Clyde Summers helped write became the basis for Title V of the Act.

For nearly four decades starting in 1969, Clyde Summers served on the board of directors of the Association for Union Democracy, on the invitation of union reformer Herman Benson, whom he had worked closely with in supporting early cases filed under the LMRDA.

Clyde Summers was a member of the AUD Legal Review Committee, which helped decide which lawsuits the organization would participate in.

Clyde Summers testified in a federal RICO prosecution against Teamsters Local 506, a favorable decision which eventually led to the establishment of federal trusteeship over the entire international union in 1989.

Clyde Summers died at a retirement home in Germantown, Pennsylvania, on October 30,2010, from complications of a stroke.

Clyde Summers was survived by his wife, two daughters, and two sons.