Arthur Goldberg
(1908-1990)
Arthur Goldberg was born in
1908. He received his law degree from Northwestern in 1930,
graduating summa cum laude, and practiced law in
1948. During World War II he headed the labor desk in the Office
of Strategic Services.
Goldberg founded his own law firm after the war, but from
1948 to 1961 his career was principally identified with the labor
movement. He served as general counsel for the CIO from 1948
to 1955 and for the United Steelworkers of America from 1948 to
1961. He played key roles in uniting the CIO with the AFL and in
expelling the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from the
AFL-CIO for corruption.
In 1961 President Kennedy appointed Goldberg secretary of
labor and in 1962 appointed him to the Supreme Court, where he
assumed a strong pro-human rights role. At President Johnson's
request, he left the Court in 1965 to become
the United Nations. Resigning from that position in 1968, he re-
turned to the practice of law, in
defeated by Nelson Rockerfeller in the race for the
governorship.
He was later a professor of law at
ican
and Social Policy for a period often years. He also served as chair-
man of several presidential commissions, including those on equal
opportunity employment and youth employment.
Goldberg was the author of several books—AFL-CIO,
Labor
United, Defenses of Freedom, and Equal Justice, the Warren Era of the
Supreme Court. In 1976 he was appointed by President Carter as
special ambassador to the Human Rights Conference in
At the time of his death in 1990, former Supreme Court Chief Jus-
tice Warren Burger was quoted as saying, "He was
a man of prin-
ciple and wholly compassionate, a complete human
being who
never lost sight of the human dimension of the great problems that
confront society."
Goldberg became a member of the Chicago Literary Club in 1945.
He presented
two papers: From Ulysses to Hecate County in
1947 and Human Rights and the Belgrade Conference, which was
read before the Club by Elmer Gertz in 1978.
Read before the Club: February 15, 1999