Committee to Frame a World Constitution

The Committee to Frame a World Constitution was organized in 1945 by Richard P. McKeon and Giuseppe Borgese with the support of University of Chicago Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins. Members included Mortimer J. Adler, Stringfellow Barr, Albert Guérard, Harold Innis, Erich Kahler, Wilbur O. Katz, Charles H. McIlwaim, Robert Redfield, and Rexford G. Tugwell. The Committee published The Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution (1948) and the journal Common Cause (1947-1951), edited by Elizabeth Mann Borgese. The Committee dissolved in June 1951.

The Committee to Frame a World Constitution was first convened in the fall of 1945 as part of the post-World War II World Federalist movement. Following a Chicago Round Table radio discussion on 12 August 1945 in which University of Chicago Chancellor Robert M. Hutchins emphasized the need for world government, Richard P. McKeon and G. A. Borgese wrote, to Hutchins asking him for financial and moral support for an institute to formulate a world constitution. On 16 September 1945. Hutchins gave his support and by November 1945 the first document was presented for consideration by the Committee. In 1947 The Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948) was published. From June 1947 through June 1951 the Committee published a journal, Common Cause.

The members of the Committee at the time of the publication of the Draft were: Robert M. Hutchins, G. A. Borgese, Mortimer J. Adler, Stringfellow Barr, Albert Guérard, Harold A. Innis, Erich Kahler, Wilber G. Katz, Charles H. McIlwain, Robert Redfield, and Rexford G. Tugwell. Additionally, Elisabeth Mann Borgese worked as a research assistant for the Committee and later editor of the journal Common Cause.