Justice Goldberg Reflects on Remarkable Career : He Made It From Chicago’s West Side to Lofty Chamber of U.S. Supreme Court

In the beautiful mornings that this city often provides, Justice Arthur J. Goldberg would stroll from his home to the neoclassical marble Supreme Court building with his friend, Chief Justice Earl Warren.

When the court was in session, he lunched daily with other giants of the legal world, including Justices Hugo Black and William O. Douglas. Goldberg had it made.

Still in his mid-50s, he had a job for life at the top of the legal pyramid--law clerks, people to help him in and out of his judicial robes and more respect than the son of Russian immigrants could possibly imagine.

But in July, 1965, less than three years after he joined the court, he resigned to become President Lyndon B. Johnson’s ambassador to the United Nations. It was a position Goldberg thought he could use to convince Johnson to get America out of Vietnam.

Lots of Memories

In a voice alternately alive with laughter and wit and tinged with a quiet note of sadness, Goldberg, 78, talked of his court days in his Washington office, surrounded by pictures painted by his wife. He still missed the institution, the congenial atmosphere and the bourbon and branch water shared with the late Hugo L. Black, an old-school Southern gentleman who often led the court in its battle to strike down racial barriers.

“It’s a great thing sitting up there. . . . You have a robe, and you’re exercising your intellectual abilities to a great extent and, for better or worse, whether you influence a person is not so great as the fact you articulate certain things,” Goldberg said.

“On the whole it was a very pleasant atmosphere. Understand, we ate lunch together almost every day. I understand today only three (of the current justices) do. . . . We differed very sharply. But did it affect us? No. I went to Black’s house and he came to ours. We’d have bourbon and branch water, have a good time. It was a friendly collegial court with a nice atmosphere.”

Fast-Rising Lawyer

Arthur Goldberg was born Aug. 8, 1908, on Chicago’s west side, the youngest of 11 children of Russian-Jewish parents. He worked his way through Northwestern University, receiving his law degree in 1930. His budding law practice, starting to specialize in labor law, was interrupted by World War II, during which he served with the Office of Strategic Services in Europe.

After the war he became general counsel for the United Steelworkers of America and the Congress of Industrial Organizations. He was instrumental in the merger of the CIO with the American Federation of Labor to form the AFL-CIO.

His work with labor unions brought him to the attention of Sen. John F. Kennedy, and the two worked together on labor reform legislation. When Kennedy became president, he picked Goldberg as Secretary of Labor in 1960.

Stocky, with white hair combed back and dressed in a blue pinstriped suit, Goldberg smiles when asked about his days in the Labor Department.

Proud of Activism

“It was a breeze for me,” he said. “We were rated the smallest department in the government and . . . the best. I had a philosophy, and I still have it, about government--that people expect government to be activist. So I was activist. I settled strikes. . . . I did all those things.”

When elevated to the court in 1962 to replace Felix Frankfurter, Goldberg joined one of the most exciting rosters the bench of nine ever had. Warren, Black, Douglas and William J. Brennan Jr. anchored a liberal wing that became a clear majority with Goldberg’s addition and that was shaking up the world of the 1950s. Segregated schools and school prayer were found unconstitutional and birth control was found legal.

In his relatively short time on the court, Goldberg was in the thick of social and legal issues. With his activist philosophy and skills as a negotiator, Goldberg did not sit quietly and spend years learning the arcane ways of the court.

‘Remarkable Experience’

He understood people, legal doctrine, precedent, change and how the law worked, said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor who clerked for Goldberg in 1963.

“Where do you go from there, was what we all felt,” he said. “My first assignment in the summer of 1963 was to help him to figure out a way to strike down the death penalty as unconstitutional. It was one of the most remarkable experiences one could have.”

Dick Howard, a law professor at the University of Virginia and Black’s law clerk in 1962, said Goldberg “hit the ground running. He came with a rather fully developed jurisprudence. He was very much an activist. . . . He wrote opinions on the exploratory edge of doctrine.”

Goldberg wrote an opinion for Escobedo vs. Illinois in 1964 that extended the right to an attorney to the police interrogation stage. At the time, poor defendants had only the right to a court-provided attorney when they came to trial. The Escobedo decision was a precursor of the famed 1966 Miranda vs. Arizona, ordering that defendants also be told their rights by police at the time of arrest.

Landmark Decisions

He voted with the majority to strike down segregation in public places and to protect the rights of demonstrators. He was with court rulings mandating the one-man, one-vote rule and in giving the press broad protection from libel suits brought by public officials.

He also joined in a 1965 ruling invalidating a state anti-contraceptive law on the grounds it interfered in the right to privacy, a right later used to justify legalizing abortion in Roe vs. Wade. In a concurring opinion, Goldberg wanted to take the contraceptive decision even further, writing that the Constitution protected fundamental liberties not listed in the Bill of Rights.

Dershowitz and other legal scholars said that one of Goldberg’s greatest contributions was sparking a debate over the constitutionality of the death penalty. He argued, albeit unsuccessfully, that the death penalty itself violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Howard also notes that he “was important above all for helping to cement the emerging liberal majority on the Warren court.”

‘Generous, Outgoing’

Goldberg enjoyed the activist atmosphere of the Warren court, the give-and-take of convincing colleagues to sign onto an opinion.

“The first thing that struck me was how accessible he was to all the people at the court, not just justices but law clerks,” Howard said. “He was the only justice who annually gave a party for all Supreme Court clerks. . . . He was generous, outgoing and accessible. It may have been an antidote to the loneliness of the court. He lived such a full life. It may be that the court was a bit quiet for him.”

However, the court could be lively in its own way, as Goldberg illustrates in discussing the personalities of the Warren court. “The only one that ever caused any problems was probably one of the most gifted justices in history--Bill Douglas,” he said. “He was very eccentric and unprofessional.

Vietnam Intervened

“On the court, when you write a majority opinion you have to take into consideration the views of your colleagues,” Goldberg said. “They come to you or write you a note saying, ‘I agree with everything, I don’t like the formulation of this sentence,’ and you change it. You try to change one of Bill Douglas’ opinion--he was tough. . . . He got into an argument with Earl Warren over something like this and he would not speak to Earl Warren for over a year, over nonsensical things.”

All of this came to an abrupt halt over an issue that was to prove as divisive in American life as anything that the court was doing--Vietnam. President Johnson asked Goldberg to leave the court and become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to replace Adlai E. Stevenson, who had died.

“Our country was in deep trouble over Vietnam,” Goldberg said, “and Johnson and I at that time were friends. We later parted company, and I was egotistical. I thought I could persuade him to get out (of Vietnam). . . . I would have been as happy as I could be to stay (on the court), but if I had a chance to get our country out of trouble I had to do it.”

Dershowitz called Goldberg’s resignation the “most unselfish act of statesmanship I ever witnessed. Here was a man who loved the Supreme Court and was at the zenith of his powers and (left because) Johnson said the country needed him.”

Skilled Negotiator

Goldberg’s skills as a negotiator, honed during years spent settling labor disputes, were particularly suited to the United Nations’ atmosphere.

“His background in negotiations was a great deal of what it was all about,” said David Rosenbloom, now a Washington attorney who worked with Goldberg in 1966 and 1967. “He had an almost uncanny feeling for what people really wanted and what their motivation was. He was able to see the common denominator in situations, forge a consensus and make progress.”

The times he lived in put his skills to the test. During his tenure, the Six-Day War erupted in the Mideast as did war over Cyprus. The nuclear non-proliferation treaty was being worked out at the United Nations.

Betsy Levin, dean of the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder, worked as a White House Fellow with Goldberg from September, 1967, until his resignation from the United Nations in 1968. She said he personally saved the non-proliferation treaty from collapsing by convincing a group of non-nuclear countries, who feared a nuclear monopoly by the United States and the Soviet Union, to agree to the treaty.

Won Them Over

She said he took the representatives of the countries into a private room and went through the treaty, line by line, saying, “Surely you don’t disagree with this.” She said in a short time they had agreed to the treaty.

Afterward, she said Goldberg told her, “That’s how I used to handle U.S. Steel.”

Goldberg fought with President Johnson from the start to get out of Vietnam. “Johnson . . . was committed to the view that America never lost a war. . . . And I thought that was nonsense. . . . That’s where we got the big arguments,” he said, “almost from the start. . . . It was continuous throughout three years.”

After the Tet offensive, Goldberg said he told Johnson that he had “lost the consent of the governed and now your only choice is to really not run (for reelection) and get out. He didn’t talk to me for three days. . . . And when he announced a few days later he wasn’t going to run, I resigned (in April, 1968). I accomplished my objective--too late.”

Furious With Johnson

Goldberg’s final break with President Johnson came over Johnson’s account of Goldberg’s resignation from the court and a chance for Goldberg to return to the bench.

In his memoirs in 1971, Johnson said Goldberg wanted off the court because he was bored. Goldberg vehemently denies that account. His story carries some weight, as reports circulated in late 1968 that Johnson considered returning him to the court, stories that Goldberg now confirms.

When the nomination of Justice Abe Fortas to become chief justice (to replace the retiring Warren) was defeated, Goldberg said Johnson asked him if he would take a recess appointment, an appointment that would have enabled Goldberg to immediately begin serving as chief justice until the Senate could convene to consider the nomination.

Returned to Law Firm

“I said, ‘Yes, I’ll take a recess appointment.’ He called me and said he had found he made a statement against recess appointments, and I said, ‘You asked me and I told you my answer,’ and then he did something and I called him and I was furious. After the election he went to Nixon and asked Nixon if he would appoint me. That I regarded as nonsensical. Of all the appointments, Nixon would not appoint me.”

Dershowitz said the Senate would not have opposed Goldberg, but that Johnson refused to nominate him because of Goldberg’s opposition to him while at the United Nations.

“(Johnson) was . . . a vindictive man who put his interests before the interests of the country and the Democratic Party,” Dershowitz said.

After careers as a lawyer, spy, Cabinet officer, Supreme Court Justice and U.N. ambassador, Goldberg returned to law in a New York firm. However, he didn’t stay out of public life long. He ran Hubert H. Humphrey’s presidential campaign in New York and in 1970 unsuccessfully challenged Nelson A. Rockefeller in that state’s gubernatorial election.

Meese Remarks ‘Nonsensical’

He returned to Washington in 1971 to open his own one-man law practice. In 1977 he was named an ambassador-at-large to a conference in Europe.

In recent years, he has written, lectured and taught. He has a son who is a lawyer in Alaska, a daughter who is a social worker in Chicago, and six grandchildren.

He has recently devoted his attention and writings to the attacks on the court by Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III. He said Meese is a “nice chap,” but his opinions on the court are “nonsensical,” “incredible” and designed to push the court to the far right.