Biographies of U.S. federal judges, apart from those who have served on the Supreme Court, are rare. Presiding over trials of those accused of violating federal laws or considering appeals of verdicts by the district courts rarely generates enough drama or interest to sustain a book of general interest, absent some personal scandal or particularly powerful impact on the development of the law. If Irving R. Kaufman had not been the presiding judge in the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted in 1951 of conspiracy to commit espionage by turning over nuclear bomb secrets to the Soviet Union and executed two years later, he would likely not have merited a full-scale biography.
Despite Kaufman's notable rulings in a variety of areas—he was the first federal judge to order desegregation of a northern school district; issued important opinions on the use of the insanity defense, juvenile justice, prison...