[1] On August 16, 1977, President Jimmy Carter nominated Rubin to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated by Judge John Minor Wisdom, a liberal Republican originally nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

He assumed senior status on July 1, 1989, and served in that capacity until his death in Baton Rouge at the age of seventy-one.

1974): "However elusive the concept may be, there is a universal human feeling, not confined to philosophers, lawyers, or judges, that there is a quality known as justice, and that it is the aim of legal institutions to achieve it.

It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.’ This feeling that justice is a supreme goal, this sense that it is a predicate to organized society, is no mere yearning, for it is only in a fair proceeding, one that comports with our sense of justice, that we can with any legitimacy call another human being to account.

The interest of justice requires more than a proceeding that reaches an objectively accurate result; trial by ordeal might by sheer chance accomplish that.