Home > West's Encyclopedia of American Law > Kennedy, Robert Francis

For more than twenty-five years in public service, Robert Francis Kennedy was at the center of the most important political and legal developments of his time. The younger brother, by five years, of President JOHN F. KENNEDY, in whose cabinet he served, Bobby Kennedy held a number of roles in government: assistant counsel (1953–55) and chief counsel (1955–57) to the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chief counsel of the Senate Rackets Committee (1957–59), U.S. attorney general (1960–63), and finally U.S. senator from New York (1965–68). His major endeavors included probing union corruption in the 1950s and implementing White House policy on the CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT in the early 1960s. He was assassinated in 1968, like his brother before him, while campaigning for the...