Thomas Daniel Buckley, Jr. died peacefully at home on March 2, 2026.

He was born to Thomas Daniel and Eleanor (née Lee) Buckley on July 7, 1937 in Bridgeport, Connecticut and spent his childhood in Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan, New York, where he attended the Good Shepherd School and loved playing in Inwood Hill Park. His family moved to Larchmont, New York in 1950, and he graduated from Archbishop Stepinac High School in White Plains, New York in 1954. Mr. Buckley graduated from Fordham University in 1958, spending a year at Sciences Po in Paris, and then went on to Yale Law School from which he graduated in 1961.

Following graduation from law school, he worked as an associate at Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP in New York City where he met his first wife with whom he had a daughter, Elizabeth. They moved to North Dakota where he began his teaching career at the University of North Dakota Law School. After being a visiting professor at Boston University's law school, he became the associate director, and later the executive director, of the National Institute for Education in Law and Poverty in Chicago until the Institute's funding was eliminated by the Nixon Administration. Mr. Buckley then joined the faculty at the Cleveland State University College of Law where he taught for more than 40 years until his retirement.

Throughout the 1970's and 1980's, Mr. Buckley was actively involved with the ACLU of Cleveland. On the first Monday of October 1982, as a volunteer attorney for the ACLU, Mr. Buckley successfully argued before the United States Supreme Court on behalf of the Socialist Workers Party of Ohio to establish the minor party exception to campaign finance disclosure laws in a case that is still widely cited, Brown v. Socialist Workers Party, 459 U.S. 87 (1982).

On March 2, 1999, Mr. Buckley married his second wife, Yanfen Sun who survives him, and from the time they were married, they lived together in Shaker Hts., Ohio. They loved going for long walks around the Shaker Lakes and in the Chagrin Metroparks. He is also survived by his daughter Elizabeth (Lewis), grandchildren John and Anna Lewis, sister Margaret Mary Montante, brother-in-law Thomas Montante and three nephews and their families. He is predeceased by his parents and beloved brother Kevin.

Lake Erie Cremation & Funeral Services, 1500 Harpersfield Rd, Geneva, OH 44041, assisted the family with arrangements. (440) 361-2273. www.LakeErieCrematory.com