J. T. A. Report on Fortas Nomination Lauded in Congress Speech

Rep. Leonard Farbstein, New York Democrat, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said today in a speech on the House floor that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency helped record the growing maturity of American democracy by reportage revealing that the two most recent Supreme Court Justices of Jewish Faith, Arthur J. Goldberg and Abe Fortas, were chosen on individual merit instead of “the ghetto concept of a so-called Jewish seat on the U. S. Supreme Court.”

Reading to the House an article by JTA Washington correspondent Milton Friedman, Rep. Farbstein said: “Mr. Friedman’s article is of historic importance in that it superbly debunks the antiquated and repugnant idea of a Jewish quota or Jewish seat.” He asserted that the JTA report “affirms that both President Kennedy and President Johnson were motivated in their nominations to the Supreme Court by factors of individual merit, rather than by considerations of religion with respect to the men they chose.”

The New York Congressman said, in the course of his 15-minute address, that “just as Mr. Goldberg was named to be our Ambassador to the United Nations on the basis of his individual qualifications, his seat at the Supreme Court is to be filled by a distinguished and able attorney, Mr. Fortas, on the basis of his personal merit. The fact that these two men happen to be of Jewish background is beside the point.”