Robert Samuel Summers (September 19, 1933 – March 1, 2019) was an American legal scholar who was the former William G. McRoberts Research Professor in the Administration of the Law at the

Cornell Law School Cornell Law School is the law school of Cornell University, a private Ivy League university in Ithaca, New York. One of the five Ivy League law schools, it offers four law degree programs, JD, LLM, MSLS and JSD, along with several dual-deg ...

. He retired in 2011.

Early life and education

Summers was born in 1933 on his family's 80-acre farm a few miles outside Halfway, Oregon. His early academic education was limited, due to the difficulty in attracting good teachers to the remote valley in eastern Oregon. After graduating from the University of Oregon, he studied at the University of Southampton as a

Fulbright Scholar The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States Cultural Exchange Programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people of ...

. He earned a Bachelor of Laws degree from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

Career

Summers taught for 50 years, 42 of them at

. He won international acclaim for his work in

contracts A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tran ...

commercial law Commercial law, also known as mercantile law or trade law, is the body of law that applies to the rights, relations, and conduct of persons and business engaged in commerce, merchandising, trade, and sales. It is often considered to be a branc ...

, jurisprudence, and legal theory. During his time at Cornell Law School, Summers authored and co-authored multiple works on various legal topics with a focus on contracts and commercial law. His treatise on the Uniform Commercial Code, co-authored with Professor James J. White, is the most widely cited on the subject. His other influential works include texts on legal realism, form and substance in the law, and on statutory interpretation. Summers has served as official advisor the drafting commissions of the Civil Code of Russia and

Egyptian Civil Code The Egyptian Civil Code is the primary source of civil law for Egypt. The first version of Egyptian Civil Code was written in 1949 containing 1149 articles. The prime author of the 1949 code was the jurist Abd El-Razzak El-Sanhuri, who received a ...

. Summers was also named principal co-drafter of a new code of contract law for

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

. He lectured annually on jurisprudence and legal theory in Britain, Scandinavia, and Europe. In the 1960s, Summers began advocating for more minority students in law schools, holding summer sessions around the country, with Robert M. O'Neil of the University of California, Berkeley, to recruit and prepare minority undergraduates. Summers taught contracts and American legal theory with his class mascot, "the particularistic contract snail," and last completed a book on the varieties of legal form and their importance in law, which is titled ''Form and Function in a Legal System: A General Study'', published by Cambridge University Press. He was well known among Cornell Law School students for his inquisitive, spirited use of the Socratic method in instruction.

Personal life

Summers died on March 1, 2019, at the age of 85.

References

External links

Cornell Law School Faculty Bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Summers, Robert S. 1933 births 2019 deaths People from Halfway, Oregon University of Oregon alumni Harvard Law School alumni American legal scholars Cornell Law School faculty Fellows of Queens' College, Cambridge Fulbright alumni