GOLDBERG, ARTHUR JOSEPH

GOLDBERG, ARTHUR JOSEPH (1908–1990), U.S. labor lawyer, secretary of labor, Supreme Court justice, and ambassador to the United Nations. Goldberg, who was born in Chicago, was the youngest of 11 children. After graduating from Northwestern University Law School (1929) at the head of his class, Goldberg began practicing law in Chicago. He soon developed a national reputation in labor law, a field then rapidly expanding in the wake of the intensive labor strife and legislation of the depression years and Roosevelt's New Deal. During World War II, he was appointed head of the labor division of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), for which he helped to establish intricate clandestine operations with anti-Fascist trade union leaders behind Nazi lines. In 1948 Goldberg was appointed general counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In this capacity he played a crucial role in the prolonged negotiations between the CIO and its warring rival the AFL (American Federation of Labor) and was instrumental in drafting the merger agreement between them in 1955, after which he returned to private practice. His book AFL-CIO: Labor United was published the following year. An early supporter of the presidential aspirations of John F. Kennedy, Goldberg was appointed to the cabinet as secretary of labor upon Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. Unlike his immediate predecessor, Goldberg took an activist view of the office. He vigorously strove to raise the national minimum wage and to increase federal unemployment benefits, while at the same time seeking to arbitrate a wide range of labor-management conflicts in order to implement Kennedy's anti-inflationary program by discouraging excessive wage hikes. His activities in this area alienated many of his old labor colleagues, causing the magazine New Republic to summarize his two years as labor secretary by remarking, "His contribution to the Kennedy administration has been notable for his forthright disregard of old ties with organized labor in shaping a new doctrine of the national interest in labor-management disputes." In 1962 Goldberg was chosen by President Kennedy to replace the retiring Felix Frankfurter as a justice on the United States Supreme Court. During his term on the Court, Goldberg consistently voted with its liberal majority and wrote several key decisions protecting the rights of naturalized American citizens. The most significant decision written by him, however, was in the famous Escobedo Case of 1964, in which the Court ruled by a 5–4 majority that every accused prisoner had the constitutional right to be advised by a lawyer during police interrogation, thereby working a revolution in American criminal law. In 1965 Goldberg resigned from the Court to become United States permanent representative to the United Nations. The high point of his UN career came during the Arab-Israel war of 1967, when throughout the six days of fighting he repeatedly and successfully argued the American position calling for a cease-fire without previous Israel withdrawal. He thereby earned the enmity of the Arab nations, who accused him of influencing American foreign policy on behalf of Jewish interests. Goldberg was also said to have had a major hand in the drafting of the November 1967 Security Council resolution which served as a basis for the Jarring Mission to the Middle East. In 1968 he resigned from his position, reportedly dissatisfied with President Johnson's "hawkish" policies in Vietnam and his own inability to moderate them. Leaving Washington, he settled in New York City, where he opened a law practice while taking an active behind-the-scenes role in local and statewide Democratic Party politics. In 1970 he ran unsuccessfully for the office of governor of New York State. Goldberg, who was active in Zionist and Jewish affairs, was president of the American Jewish Committee (1968–69) and chairman of the Jewish Theological Seminary's board of overseers (1963–69). In July 1978 Goldberg was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Carter for his efforts in the "Middle East and for human rights." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: J.P. Frank, The Warren Court (1964), 165–85; D.P. Moynihan (ed.), The Defenses of Freedom: The Public Papers of Arthur J. Goldberg (1966). (Arnold Beichman)