Eugene V. Rostow

Eugene V. (Victor Debs) Rostow (August 25, 1913 – November 25, 2002), influential legal scholar and public servant, was Dean of Yale Law School, and served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Early life

Rostow was born on 25th August, 1913 in Brooklyn, New York, a grandson of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, and raised in Irvington, New Jersey, and New Haven, Connecticut. His parents were active socialists and their three sons, Eugene Victor Debs, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, were named after Eugene V. Debs, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman.

Education

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". 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".

Career

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 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 then–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 that paper he wrote, “We believe that the German people bear a common political responsibility for outrages secretly committed by the Gestapo and the SS. What are we to think of our own part in a program which violates every democratic social value, yet has been approved by the Congress, the President and the Supreme Court?”

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.

At his confirmation hearing in 1966, Senator Claiborne Pell asked Rostow if he thought the US could survive a nuclear war. Rostow replied that Japan "not only survived but flourished after the nuclear attack." When questioners pointed out that the Soviet Union would attack with thousands of nuclear warheads rather than two, Rostow replied, "the human race is very resilient. . . Depending upon certain assumptions, some estimates predict that there would be ten million casualties on one side and one hundred million on another. But that is not the whole of the population." [ J. Peter Scoblic, "U.S. vs. Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security" (New York: Viking, 2008), 126.]

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 was an active member of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority and 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.

Personal

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.

His younger brother, Walt Whitman Rostow, served as national security adviser to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Selected books

* "A National Policy for the Oil Industry" (1948)
* "Planning for Freedom" (1959)
* "The Sovereign Prerogative" (1962)
* "Law, Power, and the Pursuit of Peace" (1968)
* "Is Law Dead?" (ed., 1971)
* "The Ideal in Law" (1978)
* "A Breakfast for Bonaparte" (1993)

Notes

External links

* [http://www.law.yale.edu/YLR/pdfs/v50-2/Rostow.pdf In Memoriam: Eugene V. Rostow, 1913–2002] (pdf).
* [http://www.law.yale.edu/outside/html/Public_Affairs/315/yls_article.htm Eugene V. Rostow '37: Dean, Scholar, Statesman] , Yale Law School.