Alexander Wohl - Father, Son, and Constitution: How Justice Tom Clark and Attorney General Ramsey Clark Shaped American Democracy

Father, Son, and Constitution

How Justice Tom Clark and Attorney General Ramsey Clark Shaped American Democracy

Alexander Wohl

2013 by the University Press of Kansas
All rights reserved

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wohl, Alexander.
Father, son, and constitution : how Justice Tom Clark and Attorney General Ramsey Clark shaped American democracy / Alexander Wohl.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7006-1916-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-7006-2366-2 (ebook)
1. Constitutional historyUnited States20th century.
2. Civil rights--United States.History20th century.
3. Clark, Tom C. (Tom Campbell), 18991977. 4. Clark,
Ramsey, 1927 I. Title.
KF4541.W64 2013
342.7302'920922dc23

2012049239

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication is recycled and contains 30 percent postconsumer waste. It is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

T O MY FATHER ,
who unfortunately did not get to see the completion of this book, and whose input on it and many other topics I greatly miss.

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is an enjoyable experience, but an extended and often overwhelming one. I have been lucky to have had the support and assistance of many people during the course of my research and writing, and for that I am truly grateful.

This book might not have seen the light of day were it not for Michael Briggs and his team of excellent editors at the University Press of Kansas, who not only had the interest and, dare I say, wisdom to publish a book on this topic but also helped strengthen it. I am delighted it is a part of UPKs rich and diverse catalog.

The dedicated and talented staff at several institutions housing the papers of the Clarks and a number of other individuals with whom the Clarks interacted were extremely helpful in my research. These include the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, and especially archivist Alan Fisher; the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas, and its director of special collections, Elizabeth Haluska-Rausch; the Harry Truman Library in Independence, Missouri; the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston; and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

A number of people provided me with varying types of support and assistance early on, including Joan Biskupic, Ron Collins, John Q. Barrett, David Kairys, David O. Stewart, David Kusnet, and Robert Goldstein, who not only offered his insights, but whose book served as a key source for discussion of Tom Clarks involvement with the blacklist.

Special gratitude goes to Vincent Johnson, Stephen Wermiel, Richard Kahlenberg, and David Frank for their input throughout this project on everything from reading drafts to simply reaffirming the value of the topic.

Abby Rezneck was extremely generous with her extraordinary editing talents, which made an enormous difference in the final product.

Though I took on the challenge of writing a book without the luxury of being a full-time academic, I did have the occasional assistance of several student researchers, including Sophie Frank; American University law students Mia Mimms, Meagan Hu, and Sarah Mathews; and especially Catherine Meaney of St. Marys School of Law, who did an extraordinary amount of research in a limited amount of time. I was lucky to have spent one very enjoyable year teaching and writing at the American University Washington College of Law, where I was able to avail myself of the schools talented library staff for research assistance. I want to thank my colleagues in the Law and Government program, and especially Jamie Raskin, who made it possible for me to come on board at AU, and helped me develop my seminar on Law and Democracy based on the research I was conducting.

I want to extend special gratitude to Mimi Clark Gronlund for being so generous with her time, as well as her pictures, papers, scrapbooks, and other materials relating to her father and brother, not the least of which were the FBI files she acquired through FOIA requests, thereby saving me endless amounts of time. Our many discussions about her father and brother were enlightening and enjoyable, as is her own memoir/biography on her father, Justice Tom Clark.

Perhaps most important, I want to thank Ramsey Clark, who participated in dozens of hours of interviews with me on subjects large and small related to his career, his fathers life, and his relationship with him. He did so without ever expressing a concern about how either he or Tom Clark would be portrayed. To this end I recall a comment his wife, Georgia, made to me on one of the few occasions I had to meet her during a session with Ramsey at their apartment. As I apologized for monopolizing Ramseys time on a Saturday afternoon, she waived it off, noting, Thats what hes here for. My only regret is that she passed away before the completion of this book, and I did not have more opportunities to speak with her.

Finally, as anyone who has written a book knows, it can be an all-consuming process. So it is with extraordinary gratitude and love that I thank Jake, Ben, and Julian, and most especially Allison, for their patience and even occasional interest in a project that, to some, defied rationality.

For anyone I have forgotten, I apologize, and please forgive the truly inadvertent omission.

Introduction

What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father.

Friedrich Nietzsche

On a cold March day in 1967, Justice Tom Clark, an eighteen-year veteran of the Supreme Court and, before that, President Harry Trumans first attorney general, sat in his chambers and sent off a note to Chief Justice Earl Warren informing him that he would be resigning his seat on the Court at the end of the current term. Though, at sixty-seven, Clark was a relatively young retiree, particularly for an institution that had been referred to as the Nine Old Men, his resignation was not unprecedented; justices step down from the bench for a variety of reasons. But Justice Clarks decision was unique in the annals of Supreme Court history because he was leaving the highest court in the land so that his son Ramsey, just nominated as attorney general, could assume the job he himself had held two decades earlierwithout the likely conflicts of interest.

Justice Clarks decision flowed not only from his love and respect for Ramsey but also from his commitment to principles of justice that he had long sought to transmit to his son. More significantly, his resignation allowed an extraordinary father-and-son dual involvement in and influence on American law and policy to continue. Tom and Ramsey Clarks tag-team tenure in government was an unprecedented shared proximity to power and influence on policy during some of the most challenging, divisive, and triumphant periods in U.S. history, from World War II to the attacks of September 11, 2001.