Grenville Clark
Grenville Clark (November 5, 1882 – January 13, 1967) was a 20th-century American Wall Street lawyer, co-founder of Root Clark & Bird (later Dewey Ballantine, then Dewey & LeBoeuf), member of the Harvard Corporation, co-author of the book World Peace Through World Law, and nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
He was an advisor to four United States Presidents, founder of the Military Training Camp Association (1917) and leader of the Plattsburg movement, and author of the Selective Service Act of 1940.
Clark organized the two Dublin Peace Conferences, held at the Morse Farm in 1945 and 1965, out of which grew the United World Federalists.
His mother was the granddaughter of banker Colonel LeGrand Bouton Cannon (1815–1906); the family lived in her grandfather's mansion in Manhattan.
When Frankfurter retired from the United States Supreme Court, Clark took care of financial matters like medical bills.
An early member and star of the firm was Henry Friendly, recommended by Frankfurter and following a one-year clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.
As illustrative examples of increasing threats to individual freedom, he cited “suppression of free speech and assembly” by Jersey City Mayor Frank Hague, attacks on the people's “right of petition concerning legislation” by Senator Sherman Minton and, finally, proposals “to establish Governmental radio broadcasting.” [6] In 1940, as a member of the Military Training Camps Association, a World War I veterans' group, Clark authored the Burke-Wadsworth Bill.
During World War II, Clark again helped with military preparedness, including the drafting of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940.
There they passed a "Dublin Declaration", which, judging the UN Charter inadequate to preserve peace, proposed transformation of the U.N. General Assembly into a world legislature.
It stated, "Such a government should be based upon a constitution under which all peoples and nations will participate upon a basis of balanced representation which will take account of natural and industrial resources and other factors as well as population.
"[11] In 1967, its committee members comprised: Thomas H. Mahony, Douglas Arant, Mrs. Mildred R. Blake, Mrs. William W. Bray, Henry B. Cabot, Grenville Clark Jr., Randolph P. Compton, Rev.
[13] UWF enjoyed some success in the postwar period, as 23 state legislatures passed bills supporting the organization’s goals, but McCarthyism prompted many prominent members to resign lest Senator Joseph McCarthy ruin their careers.
Clark and Harvard Law School professor Louis B. Sohn drafted amendments to the United Nations Charter.
They limited its primary powers to suppression of war, a radical redirection that would have required global disarmament and formation of a world police force.
