(b. Chicago, Ill., 8 Aug. 1908; d. Washington, D.C., 19 Jan. 1990; interred Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, Va.), associate justice, 1962–1965. Born of Russian immigrant parents, the youngest of eight children, Goldberg was reared and educated in Chicago and graduated from Northwestern University Law School in 1929 at the head of his class. He married Dorothy Kurgans in 1931. Except for army service (1942–1944), Goldberg practiced labor law in Chicago until 1948, when he became general counsel of the United Steelworkers and the Congress of Industrial Relations. Goldberg was largely responsible for the AFL‐CIO merger of 1955 and was recognized as one of the foremost labor mediators of the 1950s. President John F. Kennedy appointed him secretary of labor in 1961, and when Justice Felix Frankfurter resigned from the Court in 1962, Kennedy appointed Goldberg to the “Jewish seat” because he knew what to expect from him.

Goldberg's tenure on the Court was significant, particularly considering its brevity. There was a marked contrast between Frankfurter's adherence to judicial restraint (see Judicial Self‐Restraint) and Goldberg's belief that the Court should protect a “permanent minority” that had been excluded from the political process. Thus, a four‐justice minority was transformed into a five‐member majority, and Goldberg's negotiating skills often held it together. In this capacity, his formula called for balancing state interest against individual rights and liberties, with close scrutiny applied to the state.

Goldberg's best‐known opinions are that for the Court in Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), and his concurrence in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). Escobedo was an important step toward adoption of the doctrine of Miranda v. Arizona (1966), by ruling a defendant had a right to remain silent in the absence of his or her attorney. In Griswold, the Court invalidated a Connecticut anti‐birth‐control law, and in the absence of a violation of a specific constitutional provision, Goldberg maintained that the right to marital privacy was a “fundamental right” protected by the Ninth Amendment. While Escobedo was largely abandoned by the Court in Kirby v. Illinois (1972), Griswold was followed by the Court in Roe v. Wade (1973), including Goldberg's concurring opinion.

Also important were Goldberg's rulings in Gibson v. Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (1963) that the right of association (see Assembly and Association, Citizenship, Freedom of) could be infringed only if Florida “convincingly” showed a “compelling state interest,” and in Aptheker v. Secretary of State (1964) that legislation revoking passports had to be precisely drawn, since traveling abroad was a liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment. At least two of his dissents had important results. His dissent in United States v. Barnett (1964) helped reduce the use of criminal contempt for punishment by federal judges; and his protest in Rudolph v. Alabama (1963) against denial of certiorari in a case of capital punishment for rape signaled the constitutional war over capital punishment.

In the summer of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson maneuvered Goldberg off the bench to create a vacancy for Abe Fortas. Appointed United Nations representative, Goldberg found the position unsatisfactory, and resigned in 1968. He also made an ignominious run for governor of New York in 1970, but should be best remembered for his continuing advocacy of human rights during his twenty‐four‐year post‐Court career.

Bibliography

• Stephen J. Friedman, Arthur J. Goldberg, in The Justices of the United States Supreme Court 1789–1969, edited by Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, vol. 4 (1969), pp. 2977–3011.
• David L. Stebenne, Arthur J. Goldberg, New Deal Liberal (1991)

— Donald M. Roper

Arthur Joseph Goldberg (1908-1990), a leading American lawyer and public official, was U.S. secretary of labor, ambassador to the United Nations, and activist Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arthur J. Goldberg was born on August 8, 1908, the youngest of 11 children whose immigrant parents were Russian Jews. He worked as a delivery boy for a shoe factory while acquiring an education in the Chicago public schools. Goldberg at times labored with construction gangs as he attended first Crane Junior College of the City College of Chicago, then Northwestern University, from which he received a B.S.L. degree in 1929.

Following graduation Goldberg was admitted to the Illinois bar and worked as an associate lawyer in a Chicago law firm. Law practice provided an income which enabled him to earn a law degree from Northwestern University in 1930. Shortly thereafter - on July 18, 1931 - the young lawyer married Dorothy Kurgans; in the years to come two children, Barbara and Robert Michael, were born and raised. Until the United States entered World War II in 1941 Goldberg enjoyed a growing reputation in Chicago, particularly in the field of labor law after he represented the Newspaper Guild in a bitter strike in 1938.

Labor's Advocate

During World War II Goldberg established a distinguished record in the Office of Strategic Services as chief of the Labor Division in Europe. After victory in 1945 he returned to the practice of labor law, which was a growing field during the post-war years. As chief counsel for the United Steelworkers of America Goldberg achieved national stature as a champion of organized labor. Building on this experience he overcame enormous obstacles to bring about the merger of the American Federation of Labor (A.F. of L.) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.). This and other victories revealed the accuracy of one observer's assessment that Goldberg "proved to be an exceptionally able practitioner of the art of negotiating the terms of collective agreements at both the bargaining table and, on occasion, in the White House."

The leading role in the AFL-CIO merger brought Goldberg national preeminence. By 1958 he became a confidant of Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, who had proposed significant labor reforms. During the senator's successful campaign for the presidency in 1960 Goldberg was one of Kennedy's closest advisers. It came as no surprise, then, that the new president appointed Goldberg as secretary of labor in 1961. Although he served for less than two years, he was extraordinarily effective in a wide range issues. Besides continued success as a labor negotiator, particularly with respect to strikes, Goldberg fought unemployment and worked for an increased minimum wage and for the elimination of racial discrimination in employment. He also initiated both a pilot program to train and place youths in jobs and the White House Conference on National Economic Issues and shaped the policies of the President's Advisory Committee on Labor-Management Relations. The motive behind all these efforts was the attainment of peace and the preservation of the public interest. What Secretary Goldberg said of the labor-mediating role was true for other areas as well: The secretary, as a mediator, "inevitably is driven to seeking peace…. He can hope that the settlement will prove fair and equitable to the public as well as to the involved parties, but this can be no more than hope, since sanctions are lacking and strong-willed parties are involved."

Became Supreme Court Justice

In 1962, after more than 20 years of exemplary service, Justice Felix Frankfurter resigned his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Kennedy nominated Goldberg to fill this vacancy. Following Senate confirmation he exchanged the politically-charged environment of cabinet office for the more austere, but no less high-pressured, chambers of the nation's highest court. Although Goldberg served at this post for just three terms, from 1962 to 1965, he nonetheless left an indelible imprint on American constitutional law. He took his seat during a tumultuous era in which the Court pursued a course of almost unprecedented judicial activism. Goldberg joined a group of liberal Justices, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren and including William O. Douglas, Hugo L. Black, and William J. Brennan, Jr., who believed that the Court possessed a constitutional duty to actively pursue a course of social and legal change. In case after case the new Justice helped make a majority whose decision rested not upon precedents alone, but, as he said, on those principles so rooted in the "traditions and conscience" of the American people that they "ranked as fundamental." Several of the most significant areas in which the Warren Court adhered to an activist policy included racial desegregation, voting rights, the rights of criminal defendants, and freedom of expression.

A basic feature of the Warren Court's activism was an expansive reading of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which applied federal guarantees of equal protection of the law and due process to the states. The substance and scope of these guarantees was, however, uncertain. Goldberg and the other liberal Justices were often criticized for reading their own opinions as to what was fair or right into the meaning of these vague provisions. Yet they often did so in order to protect the rights of the dispossessed and unfortunate, and, as in the case of African Americans, those of persecuted minorities in general. At the same time, the liberals took controversial positions in decisions because they believed that in shielding the rights of the poor and weak, they were defending the individual rights of all Americans.

Perhaps no case illustrates Goldberg's and the Warren Court's judicial activism better than Escobedo v. Illinois (1964). In 1963 the Court decided that through the due process clause of the 14th Amendment the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of the right to counsel applied in all cases involving poor defendants in state courts. But this decision did not state how early in the criminal justice process the right to counsel existed. Did the right extend beyond the trial to the point of arrest, accusation, and interrogation? This question raised the issue of whether the right to counsel could be combined with the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against self incrimination. In the Escobedo case the police questioned the defendant, Danny Escobedo, in connection with the murder of his brother-in-law. Escobedo had not been indicted, and during this interrogation he repeatedly asked to talk with his lawyer, who at one point he saw in a nearby room. Yet the police rejected each request; eventually, he made an incriminating statement that the state used to convict him during the trial. On appeal, Escobedo claimed that the prejudicial statement should not have been allowed because he was denied the assistance of counsel. In the Supreme Court the State of Illinois argued that the state should not be required to provide counsel until the preliminary stages of the trial. Justice Goldberg, writing for the Court, rejected this contention, stressing that it would make the trial essentially an appeal from an unrestrained interrogation, rendering the protection of the Fifth and Sixth amendments "a very hollow thing."

Escobedo opened the way to other far-reaching and controversial decisions which enlarged the rights of those investigated for suspicion of or charged with crimes. To those cases, however, Justice Goldberg would not contribute.

Continued Public Service

In 1965 Goldberg resigned from the Court to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. President Lyndon B. Johnson, embroiled in an increasingly complex and tragic war in Vietnam, had asked Goldberg to accept the U.N. post, hoping that he might through his effective negotiating skills help achieve a just peace. Goldberg left the Court with reluctance. "I shall not, Mr. President, conceal the pain with which I leave the Court after three years of service," he wrote. "It has been the richest and most satisfying period of my career." Nevertheless, Goldberg, as he had throughout a lifetime of public service, approached the new responsibilities with resolution and enthusiasm. But although he achieved several significant accomplishments, particularly during the Arab-Israeli War of June 1967, the central goal of peace in Vietnam eluded him. Early in the summer of 1968 the former labor lawyer, U.S. secretary of labor, and Justice of the Supreme Court resigned the ambassadorship and returned to legal practice as a partner in a well-known New York law firm. In 1970 he was an unsuccessful candidate for governor of New York. After that, though no longer in public office, Goldberg maintained involvement in public affairs. He held faculty positions at Columbia, American University, Hastings College of Law, and the University of Alabama School of Law and remained an influential expert on labor law. Goldberg died on January 20, 1990.

Further Reading

There is a good survey of Arthur J. Goldberg's career, particularly as a Supreme Court Justice, in Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, editors, volume IV, The Justices of the United States Supreme Court, 1789-1969: Their Lives and Major Opinions (1969). His major opinions and speeches are collected in D. P. Moynihan, editor, Defenses of Freedom (1956). His book AFL-CIO: Labor United (1956) and essay "Law and the United Nations," 52 American Bar Association Journal 813 (1966) provide valuable insights into the man, his ideas, and his times. Good studies including a discussion of the Warren Court and Goldberg's contribution as an activist Justice are Henry Julian Abraham, Freedom and the Court: Civil Rights and Liberties in the United States (1967) and John Paul Frank, The Warren Court (1964).

For more information on Arthur Joseph Goldberg, visit Britannica.com.

• Born: Aug. 8, 1908, Chicago, Ill.
• Education: Northwestern University, B.S.L., 1929; J.D., 1929
• Previous government service: U.S. secretary of labor, 1961–62
• Appointed by President John F. Kennedy Aug. 29, 1962; replaced Felix Frankfurter, who retired
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Sept. 25, 1962, by a voice vote; resigned July 25, 1965
• Subsequent government service: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, 1965–68
• Died: Jan. 19, 1990, Washington, D.C.

Arthur J. Goldberg was the youngest child of Russian Jewish parents who settled in Chicago. He served less than three years on the Supreme Court, resigning to become the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

After graduating from law school, Goldberg became an expert on the legal concerns of labor unions. He often represented unions in legal disputes with employers. In 1961 President John Kennedy appointed Goldberg to be secretary of labor. One year later, the President named Goldberg to the Supreme Court.

During his brief term on the Court, Justice Goldberg supported the expansion of 1st Amendment freedoms of expression and association. He also backed the rights of individuals accused of crimes. In Escobedo v. Illinois (1964), for example, Justice Goldberg wrote the Court's opinion that overturned the murder conviction of a man who had been denied the 6th Amendment right to counsel during questioning by the police. Justice Goldberg also argued that the police had not advised Escobedo of his right to remain silent and had therefore violated Escobedo's 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination.

After leaving the Court, Goldberg served for three years as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. He then returned to the private practice of law in Washington, D.C.

(1908-1990), labor lawyer, secretary of labor, associate justice, U.S. Supreme Court, and ambassador to the United Nations. Although best remembered for his service on the Supreme Court and his extraordinary decision to resign from it, Goldberg enjoyed his greatest influence as a leading figure within the American labor movement and the Kennedy administration. The son of immigrant Jews from the Ukraine, he was born and raised in Chicago. Quite poor, Goldberg worked his way through Northwestern University Law School, where he compiled an outstanding record. Five years after opening his own law firm in 1933 he took his first union cli-ent, a local of the fledgling Congress of Industrial Organizations (cio). He soon added the emerging steelworkers' union, which became his power base within the federation. The growing rift between its social democratic and more radical wings propelled Goldberg to the cio's top ranks. He belonged to the former group, which after 1945 gave the highest priority to preserving the American working class's gains of the New Deal period. When the two factions finally broke apart in 1948, Goldberg's wing prevailed, and he succeeded radical Lee Pressman as the cio's and the Steelworkers' general counsel.

In those capacities, Goldberg played a leading role in negotiating labor's postwar agreement with management. Under its terms, unions gave up trying to win control over the management of large enterprises, leaving the decisions about capital investment, marketing, plant location, and overall output in the hands of employers. Unions also pledged to link their wage demands to improvements in worker productivity, oust radicals from the labor leadership, allow the government to supervise their compliance with the agreement's terms, and support the Truman administration's anti-Soviet policies. In return, managers agreed to abandon their efforts to regain prerogatives lost during the 1930s and 1940s, grant fringe benefits that supplemented the government's limited social welfare system, and pursue investment and output policies that would help promote full employment for union workers.

Goldberg figured prominently in labor's efforts to promote that set of ideas over the next fifteen years. His most enduring achievements include winning a 1949 court ruling that helped establish a private social insurance scheme within the steel industry, a plan that quickly spread to other major manufacturing firms, and negotiating the 1955 afl-cio merger. When a managerial revolt against the postwar agreement arose during the late 1950s, Goldberg's efforts to contain it led him to support John F. Kennedy's presidential candidacy in 1960. Kennedy later appointed him secretary of labor. During his twenty months in that job, he tried unsuccessfully to negotiate a redefinition of the postwar agreement that would have preserved it.

Goldberg accepted a Supreme Court appointment in 1962, just as that social bargain began to come apart. As an associate justice, he provided the crucial fifth vote for a series of decisions aimed at extending the postwar agreement to the South, where it enjoyed the least viability. Although the rulings did help dismantle the system of legalized segregation, they did not spark the larger social transformation he had hoped for.

In July 1965 Goldberg came under pressure from President Lyndon B. Johnson to leave the Court and accept the much less important post of U.N. ambassador. Although the two men had never been close, Johnson urged Goldberg to make the change, saying that only he could negotiate an end to the Vietnam conflict and implying that once the task had been accomplished he would be reappointed to the Court. Moved by patriotism, an exaggerated sense of his own abilities, an unwillingness to incur Johnson's enmity, and the knowledge that Chief Justice Earl Warren planned to retire before Johnson's term expired (thus assuring Johnson of at least one future appointment), Goldberg reluctantly agreed to leave the Court. After spending three years fruitlessly seeking a diplomatic solution to the Vietnam War, he left the Johnson administration in June 1968 and two years later ran unsuccessfully for the New York governorship. Goldberg's rise to prominence and return to relative obscurity after 1970 reflected the changing fortunes of the labor movement he represented and of its social democratic faction in particular.

Bibliography:

Dorothy Goldberg, A Private View of a Public Life (1975); Robert Shaplen, "Peacemaker," Parts 1, 2, New Yorker, April 7, 14, 1962, pp. 49-112, 49-105.

Author:

David L. Stebenne

See also Labor; Supreme Court.

1908–90, American labor lawyer and jurist, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1962–65), b. Chicago. He received his law degree from Northwestern Univ. in 1929. A corporation lawyer, he became a labor specialist after representing the Chicago newspaper guild in a strike (1938) against the Hearst papers. In World War II he served in the Office of Strategic Services as contact man with the European underground labor movement. He was (1945–48) professor of law at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago. In 1948 he was appointed by Philip Murray to be general counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the United Steelworkers Union. Goldberg was a central figure in the merger (1955) of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and the CIO, and he led the fight to expel the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from the AFL-CIO. Appointed U.S. Secretary of Labor in 1961, he was credited with settling several serious labor disputes. In 1962 he was appointed by President Kennedy to the Supreme Court, where he was one of its more liberal members. He resigned (1965) when President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed him U.S. representative to the United Nations; he held that post until 1968. In 1970, he was the unsuccessful Democratic candidate for governor of New York state. He wrote AFL-CIO: Labor United (1956).

Arthur Joseph Goldberg served as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1962 to 1965. A distinguished labor law attorney, Goldberg also served as secretary of labor in the administration of President John F. Kennedy from 1961 until his judicial appointment and as ambassador to the United Nations from 1965 to 1968 during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson persuaded a reluctant Goldberg to resign from the Supreme Court to accept the U.N. assignment.

Goldberg was born August 8, 1908, in Chicago, to Russian immigrants. He graduated from Northwestern University Law School in 1929 and entered the field of labor law in Chicago. Goldberg gained national attention in 1939 as counsel to the Chicago Newspaper Guild during a strike. He served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II and then returned to his labor practice in 1944.

In 1948 he became general counsel for the United Steelworkers of America, a position he held until 1961. The steelworkers union was an important union during a time when U.S. heavy industry was thriving. Strikes or the threat of strikes in the steel industry had national repercussions. Goldberg proved adept in his role as general counsel, skillfully negotiating strike settlements, consolidating gains through collective bargaining, and helping with public relations.

From 1948 to 1955, Goldberg also was general counsel for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), which contained most nontrade unions, such as those controlling manufacturing and mining jobs. The CIO had been created when the trade union members of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) showed no interest in organizing these industries. There was a great deal of friction between the CIO and the AFL, yet the leadership of both organizations realized that a unified labor movement was a necessity. Goldberg was a principal architect of the 1955 merger of the CIO and AFL into the AFL-CIO. He then served as a special counsel to the AFL-CIO's industrial union department from 1955 to 1961.

In 1961 President Kennedy appointed Goldberg secretary of labor. During the less than two years that Goldberg held this office, he saw congressional approval of an increase in the minimum wage, and the reorganization of the Office of Manpower Administration (now the Employment and Training Administration). When Justice Felix Frankfurter retired from the Supreme Court in 1962, Kennedy appointed Goldberg to the "Jewish seat." The so-called Jewish seat began with the 1939 appointment of Felix Frankfurter, who was Jewish, to succeed Justice Benjamin Cardozo, also Jewish. It was assumed that for political reasons, Democratic presidents would appoint a Jewish person to that vacancy. This tradition ended with the appointment of Abe Fortas.

The appointment of the liberal Goldberg, replacing the conservative Frankfurter, turned a four-justice liberal minority on the Court into a five-justice liberal majority, which was led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. Goldberg became known as an innovative judicial thinker who moved the Court toward liberal activism. He usually joined the majority of Warren Court justices in extending the Court's rulings into areas previously considered the realm of the states and of Congress. He was also an able negotiator within the Court, helping to smooth the way in reaching difficult and controversial decisions.

Goldberg was a firm supporter of civil rights and civil liberties. His best-known opinion came in the areas of criminal law and criminal procedure, when he wrote the majority opinion in Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U.S. 478, 84 S. Ct. 1758, 12 L. Ed. 2d 977 (1964). In this case the Court struck down a murder conviction because the defendant had been denied the right to confer with his lawyer after his arrest. This decision was a major step toward the landmark decision in Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, 86 S. Ct. 1602, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694 (1966), which gave suspects the right to be advised of their constitutional rights to remain silent, to have a lawyer appointed, and to have a lawyer present during interrogation.

Goldberg believed in the constitutional right of due process. In a dissenting opinion in United States v. Barnett, 376 U.S. 681, 84 S. Ct. 984, 12 L. Ed. 2d 23 (1964), he argued that federal judges should not be allowed to use their contempt power to send persons to jail. When punishment for contempt of court could be meted out, the person held in contempt should be entitled to a jury trial. Although he did not prevail in Barnett, his dissent drew attention to the abuses of this practice and helped reduce it.

In 1965 Goldberg appeared to have a promising judicial career. Yet he became one of the few justices to give up his lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court for a reason other than retirement. In the summer of 1965, President Johnson asked Goldberg to resign from the Court and accept the U.S. ambassadorship to the United Nations, promising a larger role in foreign policy than was traditionally given to the U.N. delegate. Goldberg did so reluctantly and regretfully. When Johnson appointed his friend and political confidant Abe Fortas to replace Goldberg, many believed this had been the primary motive in offering Goldberg the U.N. post.

Goldberg's major achievement as U.N. ambassador was his aid in drafting Security Council Resolution No. 242 (22 SCOR 8-9, U.N. Doc. S/INF/Rev. 2), passed in November 1967, concerning peace measures in the Middle East. Goldberg tried continually and unsuccessfully to make the United Nations play a role in a peace process that would end the Vietnam War. His efforts were met with disfavor by Johnson and by Johnson's advisers. Frustrated and disappointed by the failure of these efforts and the escalation of the war, Goldberg resigned his U.N. position in 1968.

After his resignation Goldberg joined a New York City law firm and also served in 1968 and 1969 as president of the American Jewish Committee, a national human rights organization. He ran for governor of New York in 1970 as the Liberal-Democrat candidate, but incumbent Nelson A. Rockefeller soundly defeated him. He then returned to Washington, D.C., where he resumed a private law practice.

In 1977 and 1978, Goldberg was a U.S. ambassador-at-large in the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Following this assignment, he became deeply involved in the international human rights movement, a cause he pursued until his death.

Goldberg wrote several books, including AFL-CIO Labor United (1956), Defense of Freedom (1966), and Equal Justice: The Warren Era of the Supreme Court (1972).

Goldberg died January 19, 1990, in Washington, D.C.

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