Leftist lawyer's famed clients included Castro's Cuba
Posted on Thu, Nov. 22, 2007
BY DOUGLAS MARTIN
New York Times Service
NEW YORK --
Victor Rabinowitz, a leftist lawyer whose causes and clients over nearly
three-quarters of a century ranged from labor unions to Black Panthers
to Cuba to author Dashiell Hammett to Dr. Benjamin Spock to his own
daughter, died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 96.
For much of his career, Rabinowitz teamed up with lawyer Leonard B.
Boudin, who died in 1989, to defend clients like civil rights leader
Julian Bond, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg and
actor-singer-activist Paul Robeson. The pair did not take the espionage
case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, only because they were already
defending someone else accused of being a spy -- Alger Hiss.
CHESS WITH CHE
The two lawyers won the new revolutionary government of Cuba as a client
over a poolside chess game with Che Guevara at Havana's Hotel Riviera in
1960, their law partner, Michael Krinsky, said in an interview on
Monday. Guevara won, then gave them Cuba's business.
There was considerable work. The United States banned Cuban sugar
imports, and Cuba retaliated by nationalizing American corporate
holdings. This led Rabinowitz to defend Cuba's position before the U.S.
Supreme Court in 1963 in Banco Nacional de Cuba vs. Sabbatino.
Rabinowitz contended, among other things, that the Act of State doctrine
applied, meaning that decisions of other countries about their internal
affairs would not be questioned by American courts. In 1964, the court
accepted his arguments.
In 1971, Rabinowitz defended Chile after the Socialist government of
Salvador Allende nationalized American copper companies. The litigation
was pending when a military coup toppled Allende in 1973. Rabinowitz
quit the case.
Victor Rabinowitz was born on July 2, 1911, in Brooklyn, where he grew
up. His father was a committed Socialist who became wealthy by inventing
a machine to make hooks for bra straps. Rabinowitz graduated from the
University of Michigan and its law school.
He began his legal career in 1938 at the New York law firm founded by
Louis B. Boudin, a labor lawyer who was deeply involved in radical
politics. In 1944, Rabinowitz started his own labor practice. Leonard
Boudin, Louis' nephew, joined him three years later.
Rabinowitz represented unions on the left wing of the labor movement
like the American Communications Association, which represented
employees in the telephone, telegraph and broadcast industries. One of
his tactics -- rare then, but common now -- was to buy a few shares of
Western Telegraph, against which the union had recently staged a strike,
so that he could hector top management at the company's 1946 annual meeting.
When the Taft-Hartley Act forced union leaders to swear under oath that
they were not Communists, Rabinowitz sued, arguing that the oath was
unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled in 1950 that this abridgement
of free speech was intended by Congress.
TESTIFYING
Soon, the firm's labor clients were being subpoenaed to testify before
legislative committees in Washington and in the states. The firm
eventually represented 225 labor leaders, teachers, librarians and
professors accused of being Communists.
Rabinowitz was a member of the Communist Party from 1942 until the early
1960s, he wrote in his 1996 memoir, Unrepentant Leftist, saying it
seemed the best vehicle to fight for social justice.
Rabinowitz had been active in the American Labor Party, running for
Congress on that party's ticket in 1947.
ALTERNATIVE TO ABA
He was a founding member of the National Lawyers Guild, formed in 1937
as an alternative to the conservative, racially segregated American Bar
Association.
Rabinowitz helped defend Leonard Boudin's daughter, Kathy Boudin, a
member of the Weather Underground radical political group, who pleaded
guilty in 1984 to murder for her involvement in the robbery of an
armored truck.
Rabinowitz was divorced from the former Marcia Goldberg in 1967, and his
second wife, the former Joanne Grant, died in 2005. He is survived by
two children from his first marriage, Peter Rabinowitz and Joni
Rabinowitz; two children from his second marriage, Mark Rabinowitzand
Abby Rabinowitz; his sister, Lucille Perlman; and two grandchildren.
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