Background
Kinoy was born on September 29, 1920 in New York City.
Kinoy was born on September 29, 1920 in New York City.
Kinoy was born on September 29, 1920 in New York City. He is an alumnus of Harvard University (Bachelor of Arts, 1941), where he graduated magna cum laude, and of Columbia University (Bachelor of Laws, 1947). As a student at Harvard, Kinoy was a member of the national executive committee of the American Student Union.
He was one of the founders of the Center for Constitutional Rights and successfully argued before the Supreme Court of the United States. Kinoy was attorney for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), labeled a Communist-controlled union by the segregationist Mississippi Senator. James O. Eastland"s Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS).
He took an active part in the defense of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed on June 19, 1953, after conviction of atomic espionage.
Kinoy made two last-minute efforts to save the Rosenbergs from execution. In the 1950s, he was associated with the law firm of Donner, Kinoy & Perlin, attorneys for such left-wing groups as the Committee for Justice for Morton Sobell and Labor Youth League.
In 1964, Kinoy participated in a conference sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild"s Committee for Legal Assistance in the South, to brief attorneys on legal problems confronting civil rights demonstrators in Mississippi. In 1964, Kinoy became a professor of law at Rutgers University.
He was counsel for the Students for a Democratic Society (Study Direct Stream) and the Southern Conference al Fund.
He was also affiliated with the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. In 1966, he was a speaker at the annual dinner of the National Guardian newspaper. He did legal work for the American Civil Liberties Union.
In 1966, Kinoy was removed from a hearing of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and subsequently convicted of disorderly conduct.
In 1968, the United States. Court of Appeals overturned the conviction. As the New York Times stated in its obituary, "Mr.
Kinoy was involved in a number of landmark legal verdicts. In 1965, he successfully argued the case of Dombrowski v.
Pfister before the Supreme Court, which empowered federal district court judges to stop enforcement of laws that had ‘a chilling effect’ on free speech.
In a subsequent case, Dombrowski v. Senator Eastland, he established that the Counsel of the Senate Internal Security Committee was not immune from suits for violations of citizens’ civil rights. In 1972, the Supreme Court upheld his contention that President Richard M. Nixon had no ‘inherent power’ to wiretap domestic political organizations." In an unpublished manuscript, he claimed that the break-in at Watergate was actually an attempt to remove, not place, wiretaps in the Democratic Party headquarters because the Nixon administration knew of the impending decision by wiretapping the Supreme Court itself.
Kinoy was one of the founders of the Women"s Rights Law Reporter, the first legal periodical to focus exclusively on women"s rights.
Kinoy was married to Barbara South.Webster at his death. He died on September 19, 2003 at the age of 82 at his home in New Jersey.
Kinoy also was the key founder of the Mass Party Organizing Committee, a coalition-based, electorally friendly attempt to create a socialist third party in the United States in the 1970s.
As a student at Harvard, Kinoy was a member of the national executive committee of the American Student Union. Kinoy was a member of the National Lawyers Guild, serving as national vice president in 1954.