Labor Lawyer and Kennedy Administration
Goldberg became a prominent labor lawyer, representing striking Chicago newspaper workers on behalf of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in 1938. He served in the Office of Strategic Services as chief of the Labor Desk, an autonomous division of the American intelligence agency that was charged with the task of cultivating contacts and networks within the European underground labor movement during World War II. Appointed general counsel to the CIO in 1948, Goldberg served as a negotiator and chief legal adviser in the merger of the American Federation of Labor and CIO in 1955. Goldberg also served as general counsel of the United Steelworkers of America.
Goldberg was by this time a prominent figure in the Democratic Party and in labor union politics. President John F. Kennedy appointed Goldberg to two positions. The first was United States Secretary of Labor, where he served from 1961 to 1962. As secretary, he served as a mentor to the young Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The second was as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, replacing Felix Frankfurter, who had resigned because of poor health.
As of 2011, Goldberg was the last Supreme Court justice to have served in the United States Cabinet.
Read more about this topic: Arthur Goldberg
Famous quotes containing the words labor, lawyer and/or kennedy:
“Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market.
He has no time to be anything but a machine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“No living orator would convince a grocer that coffee should be sold without chicory; and no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946.... We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)