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4.2.12
WC: 191694

“What about Marshall?”
“Thurgood had a drinking problem that got him into some sexual trouble. He went into therapy and Hoover gave him a pass.”

I asked Bazelon how he knew, and he told me that Marshall had sought his advice about a therapist and that the Goldberg story was well known among his close circle of friends.

I was deeply disappointed, but the new information didn’t diminish my respect for the two giants of the law. It did confirm my belief that there are no heroes without clay feet. It also confirmed my belief that J. Edgar Hoover was among the most powerful and dangerous forces in Washington.

About a year after I finished my clerkship with Justice Goldberg the phone rang one night. It was Dorothy Goldberg, she was sobbing, “Alan, make him change his mind.” Justice Goldberg had decided to leave the Supreme Court in order to become the U.S. Representative to the U.N. Mrs. Goldberg was very upset with her husband’s decision, but there was nothing I could say that would make him change his mind. He talked about patriotism and the need to end the war in Vietnam and insisted that he was doing the right thing.

Five years after he retired from the Supreme Court, Justice Goldberg decided to run for governor. He asked his former law clerks, including current Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and me, to help him in his campaign. Goldberg was a stiff campaigner, and not particularly knowledgeable about New York. Once while eating a knish at Yona Shimmel’s on Houston in the Lower East Side, he told the assembled press how pleased he was to be in Brooklyn. A few days later a friend of mine who was a reporter with the Daily News called to have me comment on a story he was writing concerning how stiff and formal Justice Goldberg was. He said he had heard reports that he required his former law clerks still to call him “Mr. Justice.” It was absolutely true. I told my friend that I would get back to him with a comment. I then went in to see the Justice and told him about the upcoming story. He replied, “Well it’s true so why don’t you just confirm it.” I said, “Mr. Justice can’t we just change it.” He said, “No, I want you to continue to call me Mr. Justice.” I replied with a compromise, “How about if we continue to call you Mr. Justice in private but we call you Arthur or Art or Artie in public?” He reluctantly agreed to be called “Arthur” in public, so long as we still continued to call him “Mr. Justice” in private. I called him “Mr. Justice” till the day he died. Needless to say, he lost the election to Nelson Rockefeller.

Justice Goldberg always wanted me to become a judge, perhaps even a Justice. I never had any interest in wearing a robe since judging requires the kind of passivity that is not suitable to my temperament. I was surprised that Justice Goldberg was so insistent since he himself had left the bench after only 3 years. I don’t think I would have lasted 3 months. In any event, I never lived my life so as to make it possible to be nominated for anything that required confirmation. I was once flattered by a magazine article that listed some of the most talented but unconfirmable people in America. I was included on that honor roll. My friend Steve Breyer on the other hand, was always the perfect judge and I worked hard behind the scenes to do everything I could to help his chances of serving on the bench. I helped him get confirmed for the Court of Appeals and lobbied President Clinton to appoint him to the Supreme Court. On the night of his nomination, he had his wife came to our home for an intimate celebration of his assuming the

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