Cecelia Goetz | |
---|---|
United States Bankruptcy Judge | |
In office 1978–1993 | |
Associate Counsel at Nuremberg | |
In office 1946–1948 | |
Personal details | |
Born | New York City, New York, U.S. | September 30, 1917
Died | January 26, 2004 West Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. | (aged 86)
Alma mater | New York University ( BA, LLB, LLM) |
Cecelia Helen Goetz (September 30, 1917 – January 26, 2004) was an American lawyer and bankruptcy judge who served as a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials.
Goetz graduated from Textile High School in Chelsea, where she was editor-in-chief of the school paper. [1] Goetz earned her law degree from New York University School of Law where she served as editor-in-chief of the New York University Law Review—the first woman named editor-in-chief of a major American law journal [2]—and graduated as salutatorian in 1940. [3] [4] [5] While in law school, she studied abroad at the Sorbonne. [1] As of her graduation in 1940, she lived at 2015 Avenue I in Brooklyn. [6]
After initially being rebuffed, Goetz took a job at the Department of Justice in the equivalent of today's Civil Division. [4] [7] She applied to serve as a Nuremberg prosecutor, was rebuffed again at the instance of the Department of War, [5] but was eventually given a "waiver of disability" by Telford Taylor so she could serve. [8] [9] [8] The "disability" was her gender. [8] [8] She had been offered a supervisor's role at Justice—the first woman to be given such an opportunity—but declined it in favor of work at Nuremberg. [10]
She was first involved in the Flick Trial [11] and then became Associate Counsel on the trial of Alfred Krupp, [9] delivering the opening statement on December 8, 1947. [12] She was one of four women on the Nuremberg prosecution team and, as Associate Counsel, she outranked six men. [5] [13] At the time, she observed that "[t]o get a decision in this case would, in my opinion, be a great step toward avoiding future wars." [1] She would later describe her participation in the trials as "the most important work I have ever been involved in." [13]
After Nuremberg, Goetz returned to the United States. She worked at her father Isidor Goetz's firm, Goetz & Goetz, [1] [14] and later became the first woman to serve as Assistant Chief Counsel to the Economic Stabilization Agency. [9] She was later Special Assistant to the Attorney General in the Tax Division of the Department of Justice. [15] In 1964, she was admitted to the partnership at Herzfeld & Rubin, a New York law firm. [9]
Goetz was appointed a United States Bankruptcy Judge in 1978, [9] becoming the first woman to serve as Bankruptcy Judge in New York's Eastern District. [3] Her chambers were in Happauge, New York. [16] In the early 1990s, Goetz oversaw the bankruptcy proceedings of Braniff International Airways, which had filed under Chapter 11 in August 1991. [16] She served until 1993, [17] returning to Herzfeld & Rubin thereafter. [18]
Goetz proved to be up to any challenge and graduated as the salutatorian of the class of 1940. … She was the first woman bankruptcy judge in the Eastern District of New York.
… [Goetz] was appointed as the first woman bankruptcy judge in the EDNY, a position she served in with distinction until she retired in 1993.