GOLDBERG, ARTHUR J. (1908–1990)

Arthur Joseph Goldberg's tenure on the Supreme Court was a brief chapter in a long and distinguished career. He served fewer than three years, from October 1, 1962, until he resigned on July 25, 1965, to become the United States ambassador to the United Nations. Goldberg consistently voted with the warren court majority on civil liberties and criminal procedure issues, although three terms as the Court's junior Justice scarcely gave him enough time to develop a distinctive voice on the major constitutional questions of that active period.

When Goldberg came to the Court, the unanimity of the earlier Warren years had begun to erode. The Court was struggling to give specific content to the broad principles established in the landmark rulings of the 1950s and early 1960s. Goldberg's appointment to replace felix frankfurter allowed the flowering of the liberal judicial activism for which the Warren Court is best remembered. Frequently his vote helped to create a bare majority for a first amendment claim or for the rights of a criminal defendant.

escobedo v. illinois (1964), Justice Goldberg's best known opinion for the Court, was such a case. A year before, in gideon v. wainwright, the Court had ruled unanimously that the state was required to provide counsel for an indigent defendant accused of a serious crime. The question in Escobedo was at what stage in the process from arrest through indictment the Sixth Amendment right to counsel attached. Voting 5–4, the Court overturned the murder conviction of a man whose request to consult a lawyer during interrogation by the police had been denied. In his opinion, Goldberg wrote: "The fact that many confessions are obtained during this period points up its critical nature as a "stage when legal aid and advice' are surely needed. The right to counsel would indeed be hollow if it began at a period when few confessions were obtained." Escobedo thus pried open the door for miranda v. arizona (1966).

Goldberg's opinions for the Court also contributed to the growth of the First Amendment's protection of the freedoms of expression and association. cox v. louisiana (1965) promoted the development of the concept of the "public forum." gibson v. florida legislative investigation committee (1963) remains a major precedent for protecting the privacy of political association. And aptheker v. secretary of state (1964) struck down a section of the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950, which denied passports to members of various communist organizations. The law, Goldberg wrote for the Court, "sweeps too widely and too indiscriminately across the liberty guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment." Aptheker was an important stop in the elaboration of the First Amendment doctrine of overbreadth. Goldberg also wrote the opinion for the Court in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez (1963), striking down a federal law that automatically revoked the citizenship of anyone who left the country during a time of war or national emergency in order to evade the draft.

Goldberg's area of professional expertise was labor law, and he was widely regarded as the nation's most eminent labor lawyer. But because he joined the Court directly from eighteen months as secretary of labor in the cabinet of President john f. kennedy, he excused himself from participation in many of the labor cases that reached the Court during his tenure.

Goldberg was born in Chicago on August 8, 1908, and received his law degree from Northwestern University in 1929. He built a labor law practice in Chicago before moving to Washington, D.C., in 1948 to serve as general counsel to both the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and the United Steelworkers. He was instrumental in the 1957 merger of organized labor's two factions, the CIO and the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and continued to play a key role in AFL-CIO affairs until he joined the Kennedy cabinet in 1961. His appointment to the Supreme Court followed the next year.

In 1965, President lyndon b. johnson persuaded him to leave the Court to fill the United Nations post made vacant by the death of Ambassador Adlai Stevenson. He resigned his ambassadorship in 1968 and practiced law briefly in New York, where he ran unsuccessfully for governor on the Democratic ticket in 1970. He then returned to Washington, where he continued to practice law and to speak out on civil liberties issues.

Linda Greenhouse
(1986)

Bibliography

Carmen, Ira H. 1966 One Civil Libertarian among Many: The Case of Mr. Justice Goldberg. Michigan Law Review 65:301–336.

Friedman, Stephen J. 1969 Arthur J. Goldberg. In Leon Friedman and Fred L. Israel, eds., The Justices of the United States Supreme Court 1789–1969. New York: Chelsea House.