Elevation and Descent

Abstract

This chapter focuses on how the Kennedys approved Irving Robert Kaufman's nomination and announced it in September 1961. Kaufman's political work and resulting advancement had occurred under the wings of Truman favorites in the 1940s and, as the chapter stresses, he'd perfectly exemplified Truman's brand of anticommunist but progressive, statist liberalism while on the bench. After the Rosenberg trial, there was no questioning Kaufman's zeal toward communists. In more conventional criminal cases, the chapter reveals that he was thoroughly pro-government to the point of secretly conferring with prosecutors and doling out maximum sentences. Yet Kaufman also fully embraced his patrons' faith in government action to bring about social progress. Beyond using the power of his office to compel integration, the chapter narrates that he worked actively for the improvement of judicial administration and argued that the reforms he proposed were necessary to advance civil rights, ensure due process, and thereby demonstrate to the world that American justice was superior to its facsimile behind the Iron Curtain. The chapter investigates how political liberalism began to strike some more through the 1960s and 1970s as a cacophonous campaign for particularized individual rights or special interests than the effort to make government serve the broad American middle, as epitomized by Roosevelt's New Deal and Truman's Fair Deal.