His early academic education was limited, due to the difficulty in attracting good teachers to the remote valley in eastern Oregon.
He won international acclaim for his work in contracts, commercial law, jurisprudence, and legal theory.
His other influential works include texts on legal realism, form and substance in the law, and on statutory interpretation.
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.
He was well known among Cornell Law School students for his inquisitive, spirited use of the Socratic method in instruction.