Eugene V. Rostow
Eugene Victor Rostow (
August 25,
1913 –
November 25,
2002), influential legal scholar and public servant, was Dean of
Yale Law School, and served as
Under Secretary for Political Affairs under President
Lyndon B. Johnson.
Eugene Debs Rostow was born on 25th August, 1913 in
Brooklyn, New York, a grandson of poor Jewish immigrants from Russian empire, and raised in
Irvington, New Jersey, and
New Haven, Connecticut. His parents were active socialists and their three sons, Eugene, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Rostow, were named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Eugene V. Debs, but Eugene himself was more on the right of the political spectrum most of his life.
Rostow attended
Groton School, and was admitted to
Yale College in 1929. At the time, his scores on his entrance examinations were so high that
The New York Times called him the first "perfect freshman". The fascination with his scores by NYT at this time was simply because at this time in our national history Yale university was on the bigitry frontline together with Harvard and Prinston universities, restricting addmission of children of Jews to the most prestigious historically WASP universities, which established quotas of admission of Jews, which example spread like a wild fire all over the Nation. See "The chosen. The hidden history of addmission and exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton by Jerome Karabel, Houghton mufflin company, Boston-New York, 2005. ISBN -13; 978-0-618-57458-2. H was admited at the age 16 because of his undeniable brilliancy and impossibility for Jew-haters to reject his application. He saw and was troubeled by the Anti-Semitism around him At Yale, and in his junior year he published an article in the Hoot with a provocative title "The Jew's position". Ibid. p.118. In 1932 he earned
Phi Beta Kappa, and in 1933 he earned a B.A., graduating with highest honors, and receiving the
Alpheus Henry Snow Prize, which is awarded annually to
that senior who, through the combination of intellectual achievement, character and personality, shall be adjudged by the faculty to have done the most for Yale by inspiring in his classmates an admiration and love for the best traditions of high scholarship.From 1933 to 1934 Rostow studied economics at
Cambridge University as a
Henry Fellow. He then returned to Yale, attending
Yale Law School, and earning his
LL.B. with highest honors. From 1936 to 1937 he served as editor-in-chief of
The Yale Law Journal.
After graduation, Rostow worked at the
New York law firm of Cravath, deGersdorff, Swaine and Wood specializing in
bankruptcy,
corporations, and
antitrust. In 1938 he returned to
Yale Law School as a faculty member (becoming a full professor in 1944), and became a member of the Yale Economics Department as well.
During
World War II Rostow served as in the
Lend-Lease Administration as an assistant general counsel, in the
State Department as liaison to the Lend-Lease Administration, and as an assistant to thenâ€"
Assistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson. He was an early and vocal critic of
Japanese American internment and the
Supreme Court decisions which supported it; in 1945 he wrote an influential paper in the
Yale Law Journal which helped fuel the movement for restitution.
In 1955 Rostow became dean of Yale Law School, a post he held until 1965. From 1966 to 1969 he served as
Under Secretary for Political Affairs in
Lyndon B. Johnson's government, the third-highest ranking official in the
State Department. During this time he helped draft
UN Security Council Resolution 242, one of the most important
Security Council resolutions relevant to the
Arab-Israeli conflict.
After leaving government service Rostow returned to Yale Law School, teaching courses in constitutional, international, and antitrust law. Concerned about
Soviet military expansionism, in the mid-1970s he helped found and lead the
Committee on the Present Danger. In 1981 President
Ronald Reagan appointed him director of the
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, making Rostow the highest-ranking Democrat in the Reagan administration.
In 1984 Rostow became Sterling Professor of Law and Public Affairs Emeritus.
In 1933 Rostow married Edna Greenberg, and they remained married until his death from congestive heart failure. Together they had three children, Victor, Nicholas, and Jessica, and six grandchildren.
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A National Policy for the Oil Industry (1948)
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Planning for Freedom (1959)
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The Sovereign Prerogative (1962)
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Law, Power, and the Pursuit of Peace (1968)
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The Ideal in Law (1978)
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A Breakfast for Bonaparte (1993)
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In Memoriam: Eugene V. Rostow, 1913â€"2002 (pdf).
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Eugene V. Rostow '37: Dean, Scholar, Statesman, Yale Law School.
