Clyde Summers

Clyde Wilson Summers
Summers receiving an honorary doctorate at the Catholic University of Leuven in 1966
Born	(1918-11-21)November 21, 1918 Grass Range, Montana, U.S.
Died	October 30, 2010(2010-10-30) (aged 91) Germantown, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Nationality	American
Known for	US labor law scholar

Clyde Wilson Summers (November 21, 1918 – October 30, 2010) was an American lawyer and educator who is best known for his work in advocating more democratic procedures in labor unions. He helped write the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (also known as the Landrum-Griffin Act) and was highly influential in the field of labor law, authoring more than 150 publications on the issue of union democracy alone. He was considered the nation's leading expert on union democracy. "What Louis Brandeis was to the field of privacy law, Clyde Summers is to the field of union democracy," wrote Widener University School of Law professor Michael J. Goldberg in the summer of 2010. "Summers, like Brandeis, provided the theoretical foundation for an important new field of law."

Summers was born in Grass Range, Montana, on November 21, 1918. His parents were farmers, and the Summers family moved to Colorado; South Dakota; and Tecumseh, Nebraska, before settling in Winchester, Illinois, in 1929. His mother died that same year. Summers attended high school in Winchester, and entered the University of Illinois at the age of 16. He earned a Bachelor of Science in accounting in 1939 and a J.D. (cum laude) in 1942, both from Illinois. While an undergraduate and law student, Summers became active in the Methodist Student Movement and became a believer in the social gospel.