Adolf A. Berle

He was the author of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, a groundbreaking work on corporate governance, and an important member of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "Brain Trust". 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.

The Modern Corporation and Private Property is a book written by Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means published in 1932 regarding the foundations of United States corporate law.

He was the author of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, a groundbreaking work on corporate governance, and an important member of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "Brain Trust". 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.

In the immediate aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929 legal scholars such as Adolf Augustus Berle, Edwin Dodd, and Gardiner C. Means pondered on the changing role of the modern corporation in society.

He was the author of The Modern Corporation and Private Property, a groundbreaking work on corporate governance, and an important member of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "Brain Trust".

During his tenure as Assistant Secretary of State, Berle rented Woodley Mansion, which had once been owned by Grover Cleveland and Martin Van Buren, from secretary of war Henry Stimson in 1939.

Once the magnificent Federal-style house was built, it was home to multiple residents, including: Phillip Barton Key, President Martin Van Buren, Lorenzo Thomas, the slave Lucy Berry, Robert J. Walker, Francis Newlands, President Grover Cleveland, William "Billy" Phillips, Sallie Long Ellis, George Patton, Henry Stimson and Adolf Berle.

On September 2, Whittaker Chambers arrived at Woodley to tell Berle that several senior government officials, including Alger Hiss, a respected member of the State Department, were members of a Soviet "apparatus" designed to influence US policy and pass classified documents and information to the Soviets.

Rumors had circulated about Hiss since 1939, when Chambers, at the urging of anti-Stalinist Isaac Don Levine, had gone to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle, Jr. and accused Hiss of having belonged to an underground communist cell at the Department of Agriculture.

Berle became a professor of corporate law at Columbia Law School in 1927 and remained on the faculty until retiring in 1964.

During the Great Depression, two Harvard scholars, Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means wrote The Modern Corporation and Private Property, an attack on American law which failed to hold directors to account, and linked the growing power and autonomy of directors to the economic crisis.

On September 2, Whittaker Chambers arrived at Woodley to tell Berle that several senior government officials, including Alger Hiss, a respected member of the State Department, were members of a Soviet "apparatus" designed to influence US policy and pass classified documents and information to the Soviets.

In September 1939, at the urging of anti-Communist, Russian-born journalist Isaac Don Levine, Chambers and Levine met with Assistant Secretary of State Adolf A. Berle.

Chambers's autobiography asserts that Berle and the journalist who set up the meeting, Isaac Don Levine, met with Roosevelt and conveyed what Chambers told them, but Roosevelt unequivocally refused to take any action.

In the meantime, Levine arranged a meeting in September 1939 between American Communist Party defector Whittaker Chambers and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's security chief, Adolf Berle.

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.

Gardiner Coit Means (June 8, 1896 in Windham, Connecticut – February 15, 1988 in Vienna, Virginia) was an American economist who worked at Harvard University, where he met lawyer-diplomat Adolf A. Berle.

Roosevelt's "Commonwealth Club Address", a speech written by Berle on government involvement in industrial and economic policy, was ranked in 2000 as the second-best presidential campaign speech of the 20th century by public address scholars.

The speech was written by Adolf A. Berle and his wife Beatrice, who worked on Roosevelt's campaign office.

Berle was born on December 8, 1937 in New York City to Adolf Augustus Berle, Jr. (1895–1971) and Dr. Beatrice (née Bishop) Berle (1902–1993).

Adolf Berle married Beatrice Bishop (1902–1993), the daughter of Cortlandt Field Bishop (1870–1935) and Amy Bend (1870-1957), in 1927.

* Beatrice Bishop Berle (1902–1993), an author and prominent doctor who married Adolf A. Berle, Jr. (1895–1971), a diplomat.

He also chaired the Twentieth Century Fund for the two decades following World War II.

The Foundation includes among its list of former trustees such notable figures as Theodore Sorensen, lawyer and speech writer for President Kennedy; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., John Kenneth Galbraith, Madeleine May Kunin, Newton D. Baker, Adolf A. Berle, Jr. (and son Peter A. A. Berle), Patricia Roberts Harris, Benjamin V. Cohen, David E. Lilienthal, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Luis Muñoz Marín, Albert Shanker, Morris B. Abram, James Tobin, Jessica Mathews, James A. Leach, Max Lowenthal, and Christopher Edley.

One of the most original contributions to understanding what went wrong came from Harvard University lawyer Adolf Berle (1895–1971), who like John Maynard Keynes had resigned from his diplomatic job at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 and was deeply disillusioned by the Versailles Treaty.

Beatrice was the granddaughter George Hoffman Bend (1838–1900), a member of the New York Stock Exchange and prominent in New York Society.

His only grandchild was Beatrice Bishop (1902–1993), an author and prominent physician who married Adolf A. Berle, Jr. (1895–1971), a diplomat.

Adolf Augustus Berle Jr. (January 29, 1895 – February 17, 1971) was a lawyer, educator, author, and U.S. diplomat.

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.

Upon graduation Berle joined the US military.

His first assignment as an intelligence officer was to assist in increasing sugar production in the Dominican Republic by working out property and contractual conflicts among rural landowners.