Goodman, Emily Jane

Emily Jane Goodman, a native Brooklynite, graduated from Midwood High School in 1956 with a commercial diploma. She attended night classes at Brooklyn College and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1961 while working full time during the day. A few years later, she studied law at Brooklyn Law School, and received her Juris Doctorate degree in 1968. In the same year, she became an attorney after she passed the bar examination and was admitted to the New York State Bar. Between 1968 and 1970, she worked as a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society, and as legal counsel for Grove Press. In 1970, she began private practice, specializing in matrimonial law, intellectual property law, landlord-tenant disputes, squatter issues and criminal defense; and in 1972 she founded the Women's Law Center and moved into offices on 351 Broadway. During these years, E.J. Goodman worked on many divorce cases, tenants rights isues as well as speaking as a panelist on feminst issues, divorce cases and more. During this period, she also worked as a defense attorney for some historic cases, including representing Joseph Little in the Attica Prison Uprising. Jill Johnston, a famous feminist journalist for the Village Voice. In addition to a number of divorce and separation, tenants' rights, wills, and property caes, E.J. Goodman also played key roles in such high profile cases including the People v. Juan Hernandez, Gay Activists Alliance v. Frank Hogan, People v. Regina Angell, and Phyllis Chester v. Avon Books Division in which she argued the principle of droit morale--the moral right of an artist to protect the integrity of his/her work. Throughout her life, E.J. Goodman has always been actively engaged in writing. Even as a Brooklyn Law student, she was writing and editing for The Justinian student newspaper. Later as a lawyer, she wrote articles, columns and opinion pieces for a variety of popular magazines and periodicals including The New York Times, McCalls, Apartment Life, Family Circle, New York Newsday, New York Law Journal, the Village Voice, and The Westsider, covering such topics as: feminist issues, child custody, do-it-yourself divorces, housing discrimination, battererd women, as well as health care for senior citizens. She published her first book, The Tenant Survival Book in 1972, which evolved from her work as an advocate in tenants' rights cases. Throughout the 1970s, E.J. Goodman was also a founder and board memeber of the Adele Cohen (later ADCO) Foundation, a grant making foundation that supported community activism in New York City. Many non-profit activist organizations received funding from ADCO. In addition, E.J. Goodman also served on the Board of Directors of the Abused Women's Aid in Crisis, the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, the Harlem Restoration Project and at the Fortune Society. With Diane B. Schulder, she co-chaired the Jewish Feminists Commitee. She also served as an advisor to the American Bar Association on Housing Courts and to the National Council of Negro Women on Housing. In 1979, E.J. Goodman was one of ten recipients of a Charles H. Revson Fellowship on the Future of the City of New York to study at Columbia University. This prestigious fellowship offered unique opportunities for mid-career self-development for urban leaders who made a substantial contribution to New York City. The following year she graduated from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism with an M.S. degree in Journalism. In 1983, E.J. Goodman was elected as a Civil Court Judge. Although pregnant, she continued campaigning into August, her ninth month of pregnancy. She won the Democratic nomination in September and was elected in November. From that point on, she became a judge and gave up her private law practice. During her tenure as a New York City Civil Court Judge, she presided over some significant or even landmark cases. In Gelman v. Castaneda (1986), for example, Judge Goodman ruled that the surviving domestic (gay) partner had the legal right to stay in a rent-controlled apartment after the original tenant had died. In 1990, she was elected Justice of the New York State Supreme Court. In People v. Frank Castro (1991), where Justice Goodman presided, the jury found the defendant guilty of unlawful imprisonment in the first degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree, and attempted burglary in the second degree. In this case, the defendant had kidnapped his victim and kept her tied up for two days, while threatening her with a kitchen knife. In 1999, Justice Goodman ordered New York City to provide same-day emergency housing for homelss people with AIDS ruling that "a night on the streets for persons livng with our modern plague of AIDS is medically inappropriate." Two years later she held two city officials in contempt and ordered the city to pay each of the 17 plantiffs $250 for every night they were denied immediate and medically appropriate shelter, for a total of $9,000. In 2003, E.J. Goodman was selected as a Woodrow Wilson Foundation Visiting Fellow. With her experience as an activist, attorney, writer, teacher, lecturer, panelist, Judge and Justice, E.J. Goodman has successfully continued pursuing the dream she eloquently stated when she originally applied for a Civil Court Judge position: "My passionate and total commitment to the pursuit of justice and my devotion to human dignity promise that my thoughts and ideas, my energies and ideals would, I believe, well serve the law and the public from the bench as they have as an attorney and in every other aspect of my life." In spite of the obstacles she faced as a woman, feminist, tenant and author her proactive commitment to the pursuit of justice have helped her become an activist judge and justice. In 2004, Justice Goodman was re-elected as a New York State Supreme Court Justice.