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:
“We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.”
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President John F. Kennedy quoted this passage on the eve of his assassination in Dallas, Texas; recorded in Theodore C. Sorenson’s biography, Kennedy, Epilogue (1965)