Ramsey Clark, lawyer basic beneath Johnson, dies at ninety three

Posted On Apr 14, 2021 By admin With Comments Off

Attorney

NEW YORK — Ramsey Clark, the united states attorney general in the Johnson administration who became an outspoken partisan for unpopular causes and a draconian critic of U.S. policy, just died. He was 93.

Clark, whose parent, Tom Clark, was attorney general and U.S. Supreme Court justice, died on Friday at his Manhattan home, a family member, Sharon Welch, announced to media outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post.

After serving in President Lyndon Johnson’s Cabinet in 1967 and ’6 8, Clark set up a private law practice in New York in which he endorse civil rights, crusaded combating racism and the death penalty, and represented said foes of the United States including former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. He also defended former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

New York civil rights attorney Ron Kuby, who worked with Clark on innumerable specimen, called the death “very, really sad in a season of losses.”

“The progressive legal community has lost its elder director and statesman, ” Kuby said. “Over many generations, Ramsey Clark was a principled utter, conscience and a fighter for civil and human rights.”

In courtrooms around the country Clark protected antiwar partisans. In the court of public opinion, he accused the United Country with militarism and superiority, commencing with the Vietnam War and continuing with Grenada, Libya, Panama and the Gulf War.

When Clark inspected Iraq after Operation Desert Storm and returned to accuse the United Mood of war crimes, Newsweek dubbed him the Jane Fonda of the Gulf War.

Clark said he only craved the United Government to live up to its ideals. “If you don’t insist on your government obeying the existing legislation, then what right do you have to demand it of others? ” he said.

The lanky, soft-spoken Texan went to Washington in 1961 as a New Frontiersman in President John F. Kennedy’s Justice Department.

He was 39 when Johnson built him attorney general in 1967, the second youngest ever — Robert Kennedy had been 36.

Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, who had been Harry Truman’s attorney general before he joined the high court in 1949, swore in his son as attorney general, then retired to avoid the impression of conflict of interest.

Ramsey Clark said his is currently working on Justice reaped him into the civil rights revolution, which he called “the noblest quest of the American beings in our time.”

He too maintained opposition to the death penalty and wiretapping, represented the right of dissent and criticized FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover when no one else in government would dare make him on.

But as Johnson’s attorney general, Clark had the job of prosecuting Dr. Benjamin Spock for counseling Vietnam-era youths to withstand the text of the proposed, a position with which he sympathized.

“We won the case, that was the worst part, ” he said years later.

The Dallas-born Clark, “whos been” a snag in the Marine Corps in 1945 -4 6, moved his family to New York in 1970 and set up a pro bono-oriented tradition. He said then that he and his partners were restriction their annual personal incomes to $ 50,000, a figure he did not always achieve.

“Money’s not an interest of mine, ” he said, but at the same time he was meeting steep medical monies for his daughter, Ronda, who was born with severe disabilities. He and his wife, Georgia, who were married in 1949, also had a son, Thomas, a lawyer.

Clark made one shot at elective place, losing the 1976 Democratic Senate primary to Daniel P. Moynihan.

Clark’s client list included such quietnes and disarmament activists as the Harrisburg 7 and the Plowshares 8. Abroad, he represented rebels in Iran, Chile, the Philippines and Taiwan, and skyjackers in the Soviet Union.

He was an advocate for Soviet and Syrian Jews, but scandalized countless Jews over other patrons. He attacked a Nazi prison camp guard battle extradition, and the Palestine Liberation Organization in a suit over the slay of a cruise ship passenger by hijackers.

There were usually two to three dozen active disputes on Clark’s legal docket, and about 100 more in the background. The death penalty instances were a staple.

“We talk about civil liberties, ” he said. “We have the largest prison population per capita on Earth. The world’s greatest captor is the freest country on Earth? ”