In his article in the New Yorker about the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Jeffrey Toobin fails to mention Arthur Goldberg in his list of Jewish Justices. Here is the letter I sent to the New Yorker.
Jeffrey Toobin (Talk of the Town, June 8th-15th) left out Arthur Goldberg, who served between Felix Frankfurter and Abe Fortas, in his list of Jewish Supreme Court Justices. In 1965, LBJ famously strong-armed Goldberg off the court to be U.N. ambassador and nominated Fortas to replace him. Neither man desired this, and in the end it turned out to be a bad career move for both, especially Fortas, who resigned his seat in 1969 over an ethics scandal.
(end of letter)
Toobin also fails to mention the claim by some that Benjamin Cardozo was actually the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. While he was a Sephardic Jew whose origins (way back) were Portuguese, there is no indication that he identified himself as Hispanic-American. (In fact, did anyone back then?)
Getting back to Goldberg-Fortas , Toobin omitted one of the more dramatic Supreme Court nomination processes, one which illustrates once again how good LBJ was at arm-twisting , for better or worse. This also illustrates how weak Toobin is on his history, but hey, he writes for the New Yorker, and I’m just an old, washed-up mathematician. Enough said!