He is part of an international team representing the Republic of the Marshall Islands, which was left devastated by nuclear testing. The islands have launched a legal bid in The Hague to hold accountable the nine countries in possession of nuclear weapons.
Between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 60 nuclear weapons on the islands, the equivalent of detonating 1.7 Hiroshima bombs each day for 12 years.
Professor Clark said it would be a hard case to win, but he thought they "had a shot". Hearings on the Marshall Islands case begin in March.
Professor Clark graduated from Victoria in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws. He added a Master of Laws in 1967 and Doctor of Laws from Victoria in 1997, along with a Master of Laws and a Doctorate in Juridical Science from Columbia University in New York.
He has played a significant role in international human rights law—especially in helping to establish the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Professor Clark has taught at Rutgers University-Camden for over 40 years, where he insisted on the inclusion of a course on the international protection of human rights, an uncommon part of the law school curriculum in the United States at the time.
In the mid-1980s, he helped shape the discipline of international criminal law that is now taught at the majority of law schools across the United States and is the subject of specialty programmes worldwide.
The Nobel Peace Prize Laureates will be announced in October, with a ceremony in Oslo in December.