Path to the Supreme Court
Arthur Joseph Goldberg, youngest of eleven children of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, rose from Chicago's West Side to become American labor's lawyer: general counsel of the Steelworkers and the CIO and a principal architect of the AFL-CIO merger. Kennedy made him Secretary of Labor, then in 1962 gave him Frankfurter's (§78) chair — the seat that had passed from Brandeis (§67) through Cardozo (§75).
On the Supreme Court
In three terms Goldberg moved the law further than most justices manage in twenty. Escobedo v. Illinois put counsel in the interrogation room — the road to Miranda; his Griswold concurrence revived the Ninth Amendment as a home for unenumerated rights; Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez struck automatic denationalization with the line — his own, consciously echoing Jackson (§82) — that the Constitution 'is not a suicide pact.' Then Lyndon Johnson talked him into the United Nations ambassadorship in 1965, dangling influence over Vietnam policy and clearing the seat for Fortas (§95). It proved the era's worst trade: the influence never came, and Goldberg said late in life he would have been 'as happy as I could be' to have stayed. He never stopped mourning the Court he gave away.
The Voting Record
How Goldberg voted in the 452 cases the Supreme Court Database records from the 1962 term through the 1964 term, using that database’s classification of each vote as liberal or conservative. The gold tick on each bar is the rate for the other justices sitting on those same cases.
Where Goldberg sat among the colleagues on the same bench — and whether that Court divided clearly enough for the question to have an answer — is laid out Court by Court. See this Court →
Source · The Supreme Court Database (Spaeth, Epstein, Nelson, Martin, et al.) · how these figures are made
Key Decisions
Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez
1963Holding · Automatically stripping citizenship for draft evasion is punishment that requires a criminal trial.
Role · Goldberg wrote the majority.
'While the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact' — the balance-in-crisis line quoted ever since.
Read the opinion →Escobedo v. Illinois
1964Holding · Once an investigation focuses on a suspect in custody, denial of counsel during interrogation violates the Sixth Amendment.
Role · Goldberg wrote the 5–4 majority.
The direct precursor of Miranda — the interrogation room's door opened to lawyers.
Read the opinion →Griswold v. Connecticut
1965Holding · Connecticut's ban on contraceptives for married couples was unconstitutional.
Role · Goldberg concurred, joined by Warren (§88) and Brennan (§90), grounding unenumerated rights partly in the Ninth Amendment.
The Ninth Amendment's great modern moment — a text 'forgotten' until Goldberg reread it.
Read the opinion →Go Deeper
Arthur Joseph Goldberg is the labor lawyer who reached the Court and then let it go. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Chicago, he became the nation's foremost labor attorney — architect of the AFL–CIO merger and general counsel to the Steelworkers — and John F. Kennedy's secretary of labor before his 1962 appointment to the seat Felix Frankfurter (§78) had held, the Court's traditional 'Jewish seat.' In three brief years he moved the Court leftward as a reliable liberal vote, writing Escobedo v. Illinois, extending the right to counsel into the police interrogation room, and a landmark concurrence in Griswold v. Connecticut that grounded the right of privacy in the long-neglected Ninth Amendment. Then, in 1965, Lyndon Johnson flattered and maneuvered him into resigning to become ambassador to the United Nations — a decision Goldberg came bitterly to regret. David Stebenne's biography is the standard life. Start there, read Escobedo and the Griswold concurrence, and consider the justice who gave up the robe.
The Bookshelf
The definitive biography, and a rich account of twentieth-century American liberalism through one career. Stebenne traces Goldberg from immigrant Chicago through the labor movement he helped build, the Kennedy cabinet, the Supreme Court, and the frustrating years at the United Nations trying to end the Vietnam War. He is especially good on the labor lawyer's vision of an activist state and on the fateful 1965 decision to leave the Court — the misjudgment that ended a promising judicial career after three years. The essential life. Oxford University Press.
Goldberg's most important opinion, and a direct forerunner of Miranda. Holding that a suspect denied the lawyer he had asked for during police interrogation was deprived of his Sixth Amendment right to counsel, he wrote that a system relying on confessions extracted in the back room is less reliable and less civilized than one that respects the accused's rights. Two years later Miranda v. Arizona would build on Escobedo to require the famous warnings. A cornerstone of the Warren Court's criminal-procedure revolution, from its short-serving liberal. Free online.
Goldberg's most enduring contribution to constitutional theory. Concurring in the decision striking Connecticut's contraception ban, he declined to rest the right of privacy on Douglas's (§79) 'penumbras' and instead revived the long-dormant Ninth Amendment — 'The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people' — as textual warrant for rights the framers did not list. His concurrence put the Ninth Amendment back into serious constitutional argument, where it has figured in the privacy and liberty debates ever since. Free online.
The reliable short account — the immigrant Chicago boyhood, the great labor-law career, the Kennedy cabinet, the three years on the Court, and the regretted departure for the United Nations — in a few well-sourced pages with a portrait. Good on the 'Jewish seat' Goldberg inherited from Frankfurter (§78) and passed to Fortas (§95). The best compact, citable life to set beside Stebenne. CQ Press for the SCHS.
Goldberg's public papers — labor lawyer, Secretary of Labor, justice, UN ambassador — edited, remarkably, by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The primary source for the man LBJ talked off the Court, published the year after he left it. Harper & Row.
Goldberg's Rosenthal Lectures — the ex-justice's own defense of the Warren Court he served, including the argument against the death penalty he had pressed from the bench in Rudolph v. Alabama. His fullest statement of what those three years meant. Northwestern University Press.
The standard modern biographical encyclopedia of the Court: a signed essay on each of the 110 justices from Jay to Alito, alphabetically arranged, by a named scholar or journalist. Length tracks reputation — two pages for Thomas Johnson, three for Woods, eleven for Holmes — which is itself a rough map of who the literature has bothered with. It is not a substitute for a biography, and for the justices who have never had one it is often the most careful short account in print. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The one-volume reference on the Court: more than a thousand signed entries on cases, doctrines, institutions and the justices, current to 2005. Cases and people share one alphabet, so a citation can be followed without changing volumes, and the biographical entries are short, written by specialists, and better than a longer sketch at carrying the historiography — what the argument about a justice currently is. Borrow it free at the Internet Archive.
The Reading Path
A researched route through the literature — in order.
- 1.Stebenne, Arthur J. Goldberg — for the labor lawyer and the liberalism he embodied
- 2.Escobedo v. Illinois — for the right to counsel that led to Miranda
- 3.Griswold concurrence — for the revival of the Ninth Amendment
- 4.The SCHS Illustrated Biographies — for the capsule life and the regretted resignation
Where the Papers Are Kept
Goldberg's papers are divided chiefly between the Library of Congress and Northwestern University, documenting the labor-law career, the Labor Department, the Court, and the United Nations years. A rich record of a life at the center of American labor and liberalism, and the base for Stebenne's biography. Visit →
Ideas for Further Research
- The justice who gave up the robe. In 1965 Goldberg let Lyndon Johnson talk him off a lifetime seat and into the U.N. ambassadorship — believing, he later said, that he could help end the Vietnam War, and finding instead that he had traded real power for a frustrating errand. Reconstruct the decision and its regret, and use it to ask why a Supreme Court seat became, over the twentieth century, a post almost no one willingly leaves.
- The Ninth Amendment revived. Goldberg's Griswold concurrence rescued the Ninth Amendment from near-total constitutional oblivion and made it an argument for unenumerated rights. Trace the amendment's strange career — ignored for 170 years, revived by Goldberg, invoked and resisted in the privacy and liberty cases since — and ask whether it can bear the interpretive weight he placed on it.
- The Jewish seat. From Brandeis (§67) through Cardozo (§75), Frankfurter (§78), Goldberg, and Fortas (§95), a single seat carried an unofficial tradition of Jewish representation — until it lapsed for a quarter-century after 1969. Trace the history and the politics of the 'Jewish seat,' and ask what such informal representational norms reveal about how the Court's composition has been understood. Seat lineage: Frankfurter §78 → Goldberg → Fortas §95.