Дэвид Лилиенталь: Американдық адвокат және мемлекеттік басшысы

American attorney & public administrator

David Eli Lilienthal (July 8, 1899 – January 15, 1981) was an American attorney and public administrator, best known for his Presidential Appointment to head Tennessee Valley Authority and later the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He had practiced public utility law and led the Wisconsin Public Utilities Commission. Later he was co author with Dean Acheson (later Secretary of State) of the 1946 Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, which outlined possible methods for international control of nuclear weapons. As chair of the AEC, he was one of the pioneers in civilian management of nuclear power resources.

Born in Morton, Illinois in 1899, David Lilienthal was the oldest son of Jewish immigrants from Austria Hungary. His mother Minna Rosenak (1874–1956) came from Szomolány (now Smolenice) in Slovakia, emigrating to America at age 17. His father Leo Lilienthal (1868–1951) was from Hungary, serving several years in the Hungarian army before emigrating to the United States in 1893. Minna and Leo were married in Chicago in 1897, then moved to the town of Morton, where Leo briefly operated a dry goods store. Leo's business ventures took the family several places. Young David was raised principally in the Indiana towns of Valparaiso and Michigan City. Although he spent part of his sophomore year in Gary, he graduated in 1916 from Elston High School in Michigan City.

Lilienthal attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1920. There he joined Delta Upsilon social fraternity and was elected president of the student body. He was active in forensics and won a state oratorical contest in 1918. He also gained distinction as a light heavyweight boxer. After a summer job in 1920 as a reporter for the Mattoon, Illinois, Daily Journal Gazette, Lilienthal entered Harvard Law School. Although his grades were average until his third and final year at Harvard, he acquired an important mentor in Professor Felix Frankfurter, later an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. While at DePauw, Lilienthal met his future wife, Helen Marian Lamb (1896–1999), a fellow student. Born in Oklahoma, she had moved with her family to Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 1913. They were married in Crawfordsville in 1923, after Helen had completed her M. A. at Radcliffe while David was a law student at Harvard.

With a strong recommendation from Frankfurter, Lilienthal entered the practice of law in Chicago in 1923 with Donald Richberg. Prominent in labor law, Richberg gave Lilienthal a major role in writing his firm's brief for the appellants in Michaelson v. United States, 266 U. S. 42 (1924), a landmark case in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of striking railroad workers to jury trials in cases in which they were charged with criminal contempt. Richberg also assigned Lilienthal to write major parts of what became the Railway Labor Act of 1926. In 1925, Lilienthal assisted criminal defense lawyers Clarence Darrow and Arthur Garfield Hays in their successful defense of Dr. Ossian Sweet, an African American physician tried in Detroit for killing a white man who was part of a mob that attacked Sweet's home. Afterward, Lilienthal wrote about the case and issues of self defense in an article published in The Nation. Lilienthal left Richberg's firm in 1926 to concentrate on public utility law. He represented the city of Chicago in the case of Smith v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co., 282 U. S. 133 (1930), in which a decision of the U. S. Supreme Court resulted in a refund of $20,000,000 to telephone customers who had been overcharged. As the commission's leading member, Lilienthal expanded its staff and launched aggressive investigations of Wisconsin's gas, electric and telephone utilities. By September 1932, the commission achieved rate reductions totaling more than $3 million affecting over a half million customers. But, its attempt to force a one year 12.5 percent rate cut on the Wisconsin Telephone Company, a subsidiary of AT&T, was quashed by the Wisconsin courts. After La Follette's defeat in the 1932 Republican primary election, Lilienthal began putting out feelers for a federal appointment in the newly elected Democratic administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Lilienthal was one of the first directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). He earned his credentials for the appointment working under labor lawyer Donald Richberg

Lilienthal's resignation from the Atomic Energy Commission took effect on February 15, 1950. </blockquote>

Lilienthal kept such a journal until the end of his life. In 1959, Lilienthal's son in law Sylvain Bromberger suggested that he consider publishing his private journals. Lilienthal wrote to Cass Canfield at Harper & Row; the company eventually published his journals in seven volumes, appearing between 1964 and 1983. They received largely positive reviews. Lilienthal's other books include TVA: Democracy on the March (1944), This I Do Believe (1949), Big Business: A New Era (1953) and Change, Hope and the Bomb (1963).

His company D&R struggled financially during Lilienthal's final years. A promised infusion of capital from the Rockefeller family was not fully realized. The company was dissolved in the late 1970s. He needed crutches and a cane at various points. The recovery period from the eye surgery forced him to neither read nor write aside from his final journal entry on January 2, 1981. He died on January 16, 1981.

In 1951 Lilienthal was awarded the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences, of which he was also an elected member. He was also a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. During his lifetime Lilienthal received honorary degrees from Boston University, DePauw University, Lehigh University, and Michigan State College.

Lilienthal, David. (1944). TVA: Democracy on the March.