Theodore J. St. Antoine

Theodore Joseph St. Antoine was born in St. Albans, Vermont, on 29 May 1929, the son of Arthur Joseph St. Antoine, a music store owner and pioneer radio broadcaster, and Mary Beatrice (Callery) St. Antoine, a registered nurse. He earned an A.B. summa cum laude at Fordham College and a J.D. at the University of Michigan, where he was editor in chief of the law review and co-winner of the moot court competition. He did postgraduate study at the London School of Economics as a Fulbright scholar and served as an Army JAG officer in the Pentagon during the Korean War, receiving the Army Commendation Medal.

For seven years he was a member of the Washington, D.C. firm of Woll, Mayer and St. Antoine, which represented the AFL-CIO and various unions, with a practice chiefly before the U.S. Supreme Court. He served on the staff of the court appointed Board of Monitors investigating Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, worked with then senator John F. Kennedy on the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 and with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on groundwork for Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

He joined the University of Michigan Law School faculty in 1965 and taught there until 1998, serving as dean from 1971 to 1978 and later as James E. and Sarah A. Degan Professor Emeritus. He was a visiting professor at Cambridge, Duke, George Washington and Tokyo universities, taught at the Salzburg Seminar and lectured on labor law in Europe and China. He co-edited a leading labor law casebook through 13 editions, edited two editions of The Common Law of the Workplace and drafted the Model Employment Termination Act.

A part time labor arbitrator for 50 years, he handled many Major League Baseball disputes and was president of the National Academy of Arbitrators in 1999 and 2000. He chaired the UAW Public Review Board, the UAW-GM Legal Services Plan and the Michigan Attorney Discipline Board, and advised two Michigan governors on workers' compensation reform.

St. Antoine was married for 53 years to Elizabeth Lloyd (Frier) St. Antoine, whom he called "my everything"; she predeceased him. He was survived by four children, Arthur, Claire, Paul and Sara, seven grandchildren and his sister Sara Frier. He loved theatre, classical music, poetry from Donne to the moderns, detective fiction, art museums, travel and spectator sports, and was the first chair of the Arbor Hospice Foundation in Ann Arbor.

St. Antoine died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 7 October 2026, after a very brief illness, aged 97. His family asked that memorial gifts go to Arbor Hospice of Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan Law School or a charity of the donor's choice.

St. Antoine shaped generations of Michigan lawyers and the wider field of labor and employment law through his teaching, casebook and arbitration work. He received the American Arbitration Association's George W. Taylor Award, the State Bar of Michigan's Champion of Justice Award, and was named a Michigan Law Distinguished Alumnus in 2013.