Hall, Burton

Burton Hall (1929-1991) was born in South Orange, New Jersey in 1929. He graduated from Williams College in 1951 and Yale Law School in 1954. While in college and law school, Hall was a member of the Food, Tobacco and Agricultural Workers Union in Camden, New Jersey, the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union, Local 11, and the International Association of Machinists, Local 751, on the West Coast. He served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956. He was admitted to the New York bar in 1957 and worked as a lawyer for a private firm and the Federal Aviation Agency before turning to labor law.

Hall set up his own practice in 1960 as a labor lawyer. Unintentionally at first, he found himself handling a union insurgency case which then led to others, so that his practice was almost entirely comprised of representing rank-and-file members suing to protect their democratic rights within their unions.

His office was located at 136 Liberty Street in Lower Manhattan. When the building was demolished to make way for the World Trade Center, he moved to 401 Broadway. His firm, Hall, Clifton & Schwartz, formed in 1980. Wendy Sloan became an associate in 1982 and the firm of Hall & Sloan was formed in 1984.

Hall was one of the pioneer attorneys in developing the case law for the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, also known as the Landrum-Griffin Act. His precedent-setting cases involved protection of the rights guaranteed by law in the section of the Act known as the "Bill of Rights" of union members. For instance, in Salzhandler v. Caputo, one of the earliest of the many disciplinary cases litigated by Hall for members of the Painters' Union, Hall articulated the right of free speech in unions in broad and unequivocal terms. Salzhandler was the first of many landmark cases which established legal protection for the rights of union members. Hall represented rank-and-filers in numerous cases involving issues such as eligibility for running for union office, discipline against members for criticism of their leadership, and expulsion of union members for advocating radical political ideas.

Burton Hall died in 1991 at age 61.

Bibliography:

From the guide to the Burton Hall Papers, Bulk, 1960-1990, 1950-1990, bulk 1960-1990, (Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive)