Justice Arthur Goldberg

Justice Arthur Goldberg joined the U.S. Supreme Court on October 1, 1962, replacing Justice Felix Frankfurter. Goldberg was born on August 8, 1908 in Chicago. He received an undergraduate degree in law from Northwestern University in 1929 and a J.D. from Northwestern a year later. Although Goldberg was technically too young to be admitted to the Illinois bar, he sued the bar association and was admitted to the bar by court order. He then started his legal career in private practice, focusing on labor law. During the Second World War, he served in the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor to the CIA.

After the war, Goldberg returned to private practice and later worked as general counsel for the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the United Steelworkers of America. He assisted with the merger of the CIO and the American Federation of Labor in 1955. Goldberg then worked as special counsel for the AFL-CIO for the next several years until President John F. Kennedy appointed him as U.S. Secretary of Labor in early 1961.

President Kennedy nominated Goldberg to the U.S. Supreme Court on August 31, 1962. The Senate confirmed him on September 25, and he was sworn into office a week later. Goldberg would spend just three years on the Supreme Court, but he helped move it further to the left. His predecessor, Felix Frankfurter, had believed strongly in judicial restraint, whereas Goldberg was an activist who took a broad view of individual rights. For example, he felt that the Ninth Amendment of the Constitution contained an implied right to privacy, despite its absence from the text. Goldberg also strongly opposed the death penalty, and he wrote for the Court in a key Sixth Amendment case that expanded the right to counsel of criminal defendants.

Goldberg left the Court on July 25, 1965 and became the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. Justice Abe Fortas replaced him on the Court. Three years later, Goldberg left the ambassadorship and returned to private practice. He ran for Governor of New York in 1970 but lost decisively to Nelson Rockefeller. President Jimmy Carter awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Goldberg in 1978. He died on January 19, 1990 in Washington, D.C. and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.