Adolf A. Berle
Adolf A. Berle | |
---|---|
United States Ambassador to Brazil | |
In office January 30, 1945 – February 27, 1946 | |
President | Franklin D. Roosevelt Harry S. Truman |
Preceded by | Jefferson Caffery |
Succeeded by | William D. Pawley |
Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs | |
In office March 5, 1938 – December 19, 1944[1] | |
President | Franklin D. Roosevelt |
Chamberlain of New York City | |
In office 1934–1938 | |
Preceded by | Charles Buckley |
Succeeded by | Office abolished |
Personal details | |
Born | Adolf Augustus Berle, Jr. January 29, 1895 New York City, New York |
Spouse |
Beatrice Bishop (1902–1993)
(m. 1927–1971) |
Children | 3, including educator |
Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. (
Early life
Berle was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Mary Augusta (Wright) and Adolf Augustus Berle.[3] He entered Harvard College at age 14, earning a bachelor's degree in 1913 and a master's degree in 1914. He then enrolled in Harvard Law School. In 1916, at age 21, he became the second youngest graduate in the school's history, behind only Louis Brandeis.[4]
Career
Early career
Upon graduation Berle joined the
The Modern Corporation and Private Property
Berle became a professor of corporate law at Columbia Law School in 1927 and remained on the faculty until retiring in 1964. He is best known for his groundbreaking work in corporate governance that he co-authored, with economist Gardiner Means, The Modern Corporation and Private Property. It is the most quoted text in corporate governance studies. Berle and Means showed that the means of production in the US economy were highly concentrated in the hands of the largest 200 corporations, and within the large corporations, managers controlled firms despite shareholders' formal ownership. Berle theorized that the facts of
Roosevelt's Brain Trust
Berle was an original member of
Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs
Then, from 1938 to 1944, Berle was Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs.
National Lawyers Guild
In 1939, Berle became an early member of the
Alger Hiss
During his tenure as Assistant Secretary of State, Berle rented
In 1943, Berle's duties in the State Department involved political supervision of the various clandestine activities necessitated by the war. Working with his assistant
Berle also was a major architect in the development of federal farm and home owners' mortgage programs and in the expansion of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.[17] He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1944.[18]
After World War II
After the war, Berle served as
He then returned to his academic career at Columbia. Berle was a founding member of the
Berle briefly returned to government service for the first half of 1961, serving under President
Berle continued to write academic work related to corporate law. His article on "Property, Production and Revolution" was a key statement of the theory behind the Great Society program of President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1965.[20]
Personal life
Adolf Berle married Beatrice Bishop (1902–1993), the daughter of
- Beatrice Van Cortlandt Berle, who married Dean Winston Meyerson in 1953.[22]
- Alice Bishop Berle, who married Clan Crawford, Jr. in 1949.[23][24]
In 1971, Berle died in New York City, aged 76.[21] His wife edited and published selections from his diaries posthumously in 1973 as Navigating the Rapids: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle.[21][30]
Legacy
According to historian Ellis W. Hawley:
- Of the “service intellectuals” helping to shape modern American government, Adolf Berle was one of the most brilliant, versatile, and influential. Moving in and out of governmental positions, attaching himself to rising men of power, and overwhelming weaker personalities with the sheer force of his intellect and the amazing breadth of his expertise, he helped to shape and Implement new policies in such diverse areas as corporate taxation, railroad reorganization, trade relations, sugar controls, Latin American affairs, and urban planning. Through his writings, moreover, he became a leading articulator and shaper of what later scholars would call “Corporate liberalism.” In The Modern Corporation and Private Property, he not only documented the rise of a managerial elite but set forth the possibility of its becoming a “neutral technocracy” imbued with an overriding sense of social responsibility and public trusteeship.[31]
Publications
- Books
- Studies in the Law of Corporation Finance. Chicago: Callaghan and Co., 1928. Rpt. 1995, Buffalo: W.S. Hein & Co.
- Cases and Materials in the Law of Corporation Finance. St. Paul: West Pub. Co., 1930.
- (with Gardiner C. Means) The Modern Corporation and Private Property. Council for Research in the Social Sciences, Columbia University. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1932, 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1940. Rev. Ed., 1968. Rpt. with a new intro. by Murray L. Weidenbaum and Mark Jensen, New Brunswick [New Jersey]: Transaction Pubs., 1991.
- (with Victoria J[ohanne]. Pederson) Liquid Claims and the National Wealth: An Exploratory Study in the Theory of Liquidity. Council for Research in the Social Sciences, Columbia University. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1934.
- New Directions in the New World. New York, London: Harper & Bros. Pubs., 1940.
- National Realism and Christian Faith. The Ware Lecture, Boston, 1940. American Unitarian Assn., Tracts, No. 356. Boston: American Unitarian Assn., [1940?].
- The Natural Selection of Political Forces (Rev. Ed. 1968 ed.). Lawrence: University of Kansas Press. 1950 – via HathiTrust.
- The Emerging Common Law of Free Enterprise: Antidote to the Omnipotent State?. [Philadelphia]: Brandeis Lawyers' Society, 1951.
- The 20th Century Capitalist Revolution. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1954.
- Economic Power and the Free Society. Contribution to the discussion of the free society ;Dec. 1957. New York: Fund for the Republic Pamphlets. 1957 – via HathiTrust.
- Tides of Crisis: A Primer of Foreign Relations. Apollo Editions, A-56. New York: Reynal & Co.; London: The MacMillan Co., 1957. Rpt. 1975, Westport [Connecticut]: Greenwood Press.
- The Bank That Banks Built: The Story of Savings Banks Trust Company, 1933-1958. New York: Harper & Bros., Pubs., 1959.
- Power without Property: A New Development in American Political Economy. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1959.
- The Motive Power of Political Economy.. [New York]: New York Society for Ethical Culture, 1960.
- The Cold War in Latin America. The Brian McMahon Lectures, 1961. [Storrs (Connecticut)?, 1961?].
- Latin America: Diplomacy and Reality. New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper & Row, 1962. Rpt. Westport (Connecticut): Greenwood Press, 1982.
- The American Economic Republic. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World; London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1963.
- If Marx Were To Return. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Information Service, 1965. Electronic copy from HathiTrust http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009984714
- The Three Faces of Power. [Originally presented as the Carpentier Lectures, Columbia University, March 1967.] New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1967.
- Political trends in Brazil by Vladimir Reisky de Dubnic, foreword by Adolf A. Berle (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1968)
- Power: Epilogue in America. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968. (Taken from the author's Power to be published in 1969, and "published as a New Year's greeting to friends of the author and the publisher.")
- Power. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1969.
- Leaning against the Dawn: An Appreciation of the Twentieth Century Fund and Its Fifty Years of Adventure in Seeking To Influence American Development toward a More Effectively Just Civilization, 1919-1969. New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1969.
- Navigating the Rapids, 1918–1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle. Beatrice Bishop Berle, Travis Beal Jacobs, Eds. Max Ascoli, Intro. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973.
- Articles
- "Non-Voting Stock and Bankers Control" (1925–1926) 39 Harvard Law Review 673
- "Corporate Powers as Powers in Trust" (1931) 44 Harvard Law Review 1049
- "The Theory of Enterprise Entity" (1947) 47(3) Columbia Law Review 343
- "The Developing Law of Corporate Concentration" (1952) 19(4) University of Chicago Law Review 639
- "Constitutional Limitations on Corporate Activity-Protection of Personal Rights from Invasion Through Economic Power" (1952) 100 University of Pennsylvania Law Review 933
- "Control in Corporate Law" (1958) 58 Columbia Law Review 1212
- "Legal Problems of Economic Power" (1960) 60 Columbia Law Review 4
- "Modern Functions of the Corporate System" (1962) 62 Columbia Law Review 433
- "Property, Production and Revolution" (1965) 65 Columbia Law Review 1
- "Corporate Decision-Making and Social Control" (1968–1969) 24 Business Lawyer 149
See also
- U.S. corporate law
- Corporate governance
- History of economic thought
- Berle-Dodd debate
References
- Notes
- ^ "Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. - People - Department History - Office of the Historian".
- OCLC 1463642.
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2015-01-20. Retrieved 2015-01-20.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ Nicholas Lemann, Transaction Man, 26
- ^ Title: Corporate Responsibility, Business Motivation, and Reality. Author: Henry G. Manne. Publication: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Date: 1962. Page: 57. Online: [1]
- ^ Title: Corporate Responsibility, Business Motivation, and Reality. Author: Henry G. Manne. Publication: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Date: 1962. Page: 55. Online: [2]
- ^ p. 313, 1932 edition
- ^ FDR’S Commonwealth Club Address: Redefining Individualism, Adjudicating Greatness, by Davis W. Houck
- ^ Stephen E. Lucas and Martin J. Medhurst, "American Public Address: The Top One Hundred Speeches of the Twentieth Century," paper presented at the National Communication Association, November 2000, Seattle, Washington. Cited in FDR’S Commonwealth Club Address: Redefining Individualism, Adjudicating Greatness, by Davis W. Houck
- ^ ISBN 0-02-929170-4.
- ^ Chomsky, Noam (April 21, 2011). "Is the world too big to fail?". Salon.com.
- ^ Christopher Andrew, For the President's eyes only: Secret intelligence and the American presidency from Washington to Bush (1996) pp 127-31.
- ^ Alan P. Dobson, "The Other Air Battle: The American Pursuit of Post-War Civil Aviation Rights." The Historical Journal 28.2 (1985): 429-439.
- ^ Rabinowitz, Victor; Ledwith, Tim, eds. (1987). A History of the National Lawyers Guild: 1937-1987. National Lawyers Guild. pp. 7–8 (founding), 12 (Berle, Ernst). Retrieved 14 May 2019.
- ^ Chambers, W. (1952). Witness. New York: Random House.
- ISBN 0-394-49176-9.
- ^ Democracy and the New Deal encyclopedia.com, accessed May 4, 2010
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved June 16, 2011.
- ISBN 978-85-8057-432-6.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2022-10-07.
- ^ a b c Kennedy, Shawn G. (14 June 1993). "Beatrice Berle, 90, A Doctor, Teacher And Medical Writer". New York Times Times. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
- ^ Times, Special To The New York (13 December 1953). "BEATRICE BERLE WED IN REYKJANIK; Daughter of Former Assistant Secretary of State Married to Lieut, Dean Meyerson". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
- ^ Times, Special To The New York (31 May 1949). "ALICE B. BERLE PLANS WEDDING FOR JUNE 18". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
- ^ Times, Special To New York (19 June 1949). "NUPTIALS IN HOME FOR ALICE BERLE; Daughter of Former Diplomat Married in Great Barrington to Clan Crawford, Jr". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
- ^ "Adolf A. Berles Have Son". The New York Times. 10 December 1937. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
- ^ "Paid Notice: Deaths BERLE, PETER A. A." The New York Times. 5 November 2007. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
- ^ Depalma, Anthony (5 November 2007). "Peter A. A. Berle, Lawmaker and Conservationist, Dies at 69". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
- ^ Times, Special To The New York (28 August 1932). "MISS FIELD BRIDE OP LIEUT. WILDE; Brilliant Church Ceremony in Lenox for Commodore. Vanderbilt's Descendant. BISHOP DAVIES OFFICIATES Bride Attended by Sister, Mrs. H. B. Jackson, and Six Bridesmaids Reception at High Lawn House". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
- ^ Times, Special To The New York (31 May 1960). "Lila Wilde Wed To Peter Berle In Lenox, Mass.; Teacher Is Bride of Air Force Lieutenant, Son of Former Diplomat". The New York Times. Retrieved 14 May 2017.
- LCCN 72088805.
- ^ Ellis W. Hawley, “Berle, Adolph Augustus” in John A. Garraty, ed. Encyclopedia of American Biography (2nd ed. 1996) p. 94 online
Sources
Secondary sources
- Bratton, William W. "Berle and Means reconsidered at the century's turn." Journal of Corporation Law 26 (2000): 737+.
- Eden, Robert. "On the Origins of the Regime of Pragmatic Liberalism: John Dewey, Adolf A. Berle, and FDR's Commonwealth Club Address of 1932." Studies in American Political Development 7.1 (1993): 74-150.
- Hawley, Ellis W. "Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era." Reviews in American History (1990) 18#2 pp 229–234. online
- Kirkendall, Richard S. "A. A. Berle, Jr., Student of the Corporation, 1917-1932," Business History Review (1961) 35:43-58.
- Schwarz, Jonathan A. Liberal: Adolf A. Berle and the Vision of an American Era (1987) online free
- Stigler, George J., and Claire Friedland. "The literature of economics: The case of Berle and Means." Journal of Law and Economics 26.2 (1983): 237-268.
- Wang, Jessica. "Neo-Brandeisianism and the new deal: Adolf A. Berle, Jr., William O. Douglas, and the problem of corporate finance in the 1930s." Seattle University Law Review. 33 (2009): 1221+ online.
- Welch Jr, Richard E. "Lippmann, Berle, and the US Response to the Cuban Revolution." Diplomatic History 6.2 (1982): 125-144.
- Symposium: In Berle's Footsteps—A Symposium Celebrating the Launch of the Adolf A. Berle, Jr. Center on Corporations, Law & Society
Primary sources
- Berle, Adolf Augustus. Navigating the rapids, 1918-1971: from the papers of Adolf A. Berle. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Press, 1973).
- Berle, Beatrice Bishop. A life in two worlds: the autobiography of Beatrice Bishop Berle (1983), the wife of A A Berle. online
External links
- Biography
- Wilson Fails to Bring True Liberalism Berle article on the Treaty of Versailles, from The Nation magazine.
- FDR Library: Berle papers
- WNYC: Adolf A. Berle Q&A on WNYC (Oct 12, 1958)
- A film clip "Longines Chronoscope with A.A. Burley, Jr (SIC)" is available for viewing at the Internet Archive
- Works by or about Adolf A. Berle at Internet Archive
- Newspaper clippings about Adolf A. Berle in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW