Arthur Goldberg was appointed Secretary of Labor by President Kennedy in 1961. A rising star in the Democratic Party, Goldberg had already established a name for himself as General Counsel for the CIO and the United Steelworkers of America. A year later, President Kennedy nominated Goldberg to the Supreme Court. In this capacity, Goldberg dealt with many cases involving civil rights, which had become the most pressing domestic issue in 1962. In 1965, under pressure from President Johnson, Justice Goldberg resigned his lifetime position on the Supreme Court to become United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Frustrated by his efforts to bring peace to Vietnam, Goldberg resigned from his ambassadorship in 1968 and returned to practicing law. In 1977 President Jimmy Carter appointed Goldberg United States Ambassador to the Belgrade Conference on Human Rights.
1908 Born, Chicago, IL
1929 B. S. L., Northwestern University
1929 Admitted to Illinois State Bar
1929-1941 Practiced law privately
1930 J.D., Northwestern University
1937 Admitted to Supreme Court Bar
1942-1944 Served to Major, U S Army, Office of Strategic Services
1945-1961 Partner, Goldberg, Devoe, Shadur & Mikva
1945-1961 General Counsel, Congress of Industrial Organizations
1948-1961 General Counsel, United Steel Workers of America
1955-1961 Special Counsel and General Counsel of Industrial Union
Department, AFL-CIO
1961-1962 U.S. Secretary of Labor
1962-1965 Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
1965-1968 U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
1968-1969 Charles Evans Hughes Professor, Princeton University
1968-1990 Chairman, Truman Center for the Advancement of Peace
1969-1970 Distinguished professor, Columbia University
1970 Defeated as Democratic candidate for governor of New York
1971-1973 University Professor of Law and Diplomacy, American
University
1974-1990 Visiting Distinguished Professor, Hastings College of the Law
1977 United States Ambassador to the Belgrade Conference on
Human Rights
1990 Died
Author
AFL-CIO: Labor United, 1956
The Defenses of Freedom: The Public Papers of Arthur J. Goldberg (edited by Daniel Patrick Moynihan)
Equal Justice: The Warren Era of the Supreme Court, 1971
Court (Introduction by Archibald Cox), 1986
Source
Contemporary Authors Online.The Gale Group, 1999.
See also:
Archives and Manuscripts: Arthur Goldberg: click here
Oral History Project: click here