Wellington, Harry H.

English

Penn Law: Legal Scholarship Repository

CLYDE SUMMERS AND THE EARLY YALE YEARSHARRY H. WELLINGTONtI.Who ever heard of dedicating a casebook to the senior author ofa rival book? Two explanations are possible. In this case both aretrue. The rival casebook is no real competition;' but its seniorauthor is Mr. Labor Law. The dedication in the tenth edition of theleading casebook reads: "To Clyde W. Summers. ExemplaryScholar, Teacher, and Colleague Whose Probing, Farsighted, Con-structive and Compassionate Writings Provide a Model for All in theField of Labor Law." 2 And that too is true.Clyde and I came to Yale together in the Fall of 1956. I had justfinished a clerkship and was, more or less, starting out. Clyde was adistinguished visiting professor and, during the course of the year,accepted the law faculty's offer of tenure. That was a happy day forYale.What a wonderful time it was then in New Haven. Not only werewe all young, but half the faculty of the Law School had just been"called" (as Gene Rostow, its dean, liked to put it in his anglophilicway) and a truly interesting experiment in legal education was aboutto be inaugurated. I am thinking about the Divisional Program.Labor Law was to be one of ten divisions that the school presentedthat year to its students and the world of legal education.First a word about that Divisional Program; then about theLabor Law Division and Clyde Summers.II.The Divisional Program was initiated in the 1956-57 academicyear and, if I may be permitted to paraphrase and interpolate fromcontemporaneous documents, it might well be described as follows:During their fourth and fifth terms, each student was required tot Sterling Professor of Law, Yale University.I C. SUMMERS, H. WELLINGTON & A. HYDE, LALOR LAw (3d. 1982), is a very slowseller.2 A. Cox, D. BOK & R. GORMAN, LABOR LAw xix (10th ed. 1986).(643)644 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 138:643elect a Divisional program, carrying twelve units of credit (generallysix each term) and requiring her to undertake intensive individualstudy in a basic field of law.The faculty did not think of the program as one of postgraduateprofessional specialization, nor were its educational goals those ofmost college major requirements. Its purpose was to give each stu-dent, as part of her general education in law, the opportunity forsustained experience in individual research. It was meant to providethat one sixth of a student's academic life be carried out throughmethods other than those of conventional classroom instruction:namely, through supervised reading, research, and legal writing, in asetting of small group inquiry. Each student was required to com-plete a major research paper, comparable in scope to a law journalcomment; read widely in the literature of a major branch of law; par-ticipate in at least three or four small discussion seminars onproblems germane to the themes of her program of reading andresearch; and to be examined in all phases of her work.To assist the student in acquiring background and perspectivefor her research and writing, small advanced classes were provided ina number of broadly defined areas of the curriculum.In addition to Divisional seminars, regular group meetings ofstudents working in the same or related areas were often held duringthe fifth term to discuss and criticize each student's major researchpaper which was circulated in draft in advance. Each research paperwas also reviewed and criticized at several stages of its developmentby the faculty member under whose supervision it was written.Each Divisional Program, moreover, required other writtenmemoranda from students, the investigation of assigned problems,individual conferences, and often additional seminars, lectures, andspecial classes. There were, in the beginning at least, comprehensiveexaminations-sometimes written, sometimes oral--of a student'swork in the program.And it was the faculties' policy to encourage the fullest use ofstudents' written work by publication where appropriate.III.Because the program locked faculty members into set teachingpatterns, imposed extraordinary responsibility for student researchand writing on the faculty and because of inevitable free-riderproblems, the faculty was much too willing, under student pressureagainst all requirements, to allow the program slowly to wither away.CLYDE W. SUMMERSHow sad, for during its time it was splendid; and the Labor Law divi-sion, because of Clyde, was a stand out. The other divisions were:Commercial Transactions, Corporate Management and Finance,Family Transactions, International Law, Law and the Behavioral Sci-ences, Procedure and Advocacy, Property, Public Control of Busi-ness, and Public Law.IV.In the 1959-60 Yale Law School Bulletin, Clyde and I describedour division as follows:3General scope. A study of private law-making process of collectivebargaining and problems of administration of collective agree-ments; government and sponsorship and control of collective bar-gaining; regulation of unions; the individual employment relation;subsidiary rights rising out of the employment relations, includingprotection against industrial accidents, disability, unemployment,and old age.Prerequisites. Labor Law; Administrative Process (to be taken atlatest during the fourth term).That year we offered the following four seminars4:Government of Labor Unions. Mr. Summers and Mr. Wellington.2 units.A seminar emphasizing the status-of individuals within the col-lective system. The rights of the individual under a collectiveagreement, individual grievances, rights of individuals withinunions, legal control of internal union affairs.Labor Relations. Mr. Summers and Mr. Wellington. 2 units.The problems of collective bargaining and the administrationof collective agreements, including legal limits on the content ofthe collective agreement, the legal enforcement of agreements, andthe arbitration process in adjustment of grievances.Public Control of Labor's Economic Power. Mr. Summers and Mr.Wellington.Discussion and criticism of Divisional papers and otherselected current problems in labor law and labor relations.It was quite a business and I was one of Clyde's better students.What a wonderful teacher he was. His understanding of unions andof their internal affairs, of the process of collective bargaining, oflabor history and of contemporary American and comparative labor3 1959-60 BULLETIN OF THE YALE LAW SCHOOL 43.4 Id. at 33, 43.1990]646 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 138:643law were prodigious. Nor did Clyde have any difficulty in communi-cating: On the average, his students learned as much as any studentsanywhere have ever learned.V.He and I disagreed quite a lot. Generally he was, as I have cometo understand, right-or at least more nearly so than I. Never didour disagreements lead to difficulties between us. And, I like tothink that they enlivened the many seminars we taught jointly.Several papers that were written for the Labor Law Divisionwere published in the Yale Law Journal or in other law reviews. Clydeworked hard at this and took great pride in his students achieve-ments. And, of course, they loved him. How could they not? For hewas (and I suspect he still is) fair, careful, attentive, concerned andabove all uncompromisingly honest.I was lucky enough to see those qualities at work in another con-text as well. Clyde and I wrote a casebook together.5 And, even asin the seminars we did together where Clyde showed me throughexample how to teach, in the book project his example made clear tome the process of true scholarship.VI.What a scholar Clyde Summers has been! No one has had afirmer grip on a fields than he. Nor has anyone been more influentialin shaping the way we think about a discipline.I hope Penn lets him continue t6 teach. I am sure that I shallcontinue to learn from his wonderful pen, an instrument that is unaf-fected by a premature and, I suspect, forced retirement.Please Clyde, write on.C. SUMMERS & H. WELLINGTON, LABOR LAw (lst ed. 1968).

Clyde Summers and the Early Yale Years

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Clyde Summers and the Early Yale Years

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