LOS ANGELES — Today, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California announced that its Board Chair Michele Goodwin, chancellor’s professor of law and director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, will join the faculty at Georgetown School of Law this fall.
“We can’t possibly express our gratitude to Professor Goodwin for serving as our Foundation Board chair especially at a time when our nation is dealing with the upheaval and suffering caused by the Supreme Court’s gutting of Roe v. Wade,” said Hector Villagra, ACLU SoCal executive director. “At such a challenging time, Professor Goodwin led with the wisdom, grace and technical and interpersonal skills needed to unify and mobilize the organization to achieve its mission. As we prepare to celebrate our organization’s centennial, and all those who have contributed to its work and success, she holds a special place in our hearts.”
At Georgetown Law, Goodwin will hold a distinguished professorship.
Goodwin boasts an impeccable career as a prolific health and constitutional law scholar and public intellectual. Goodwin is an elected member of the American Law Institute and the 2022 recipient of the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Award, as well as the 2022 Trailblazer Award from the Black Women Lawyers Association of Los Angeles.
An ardent and lifelong supporter of the ACLU, Goodwin has served on both the ACLU National and ACLU SoCal Boards and on its respective executive committees. As ACLU SoCal Foundation Board chair since 2022, Goodwin has stewarded the organization in the wake of a global pandemic, unionization and the sharp turn of the Supreme Court in dismantling reproductive rights.
As one of the nation’s top constitutional law scholars, she led the clarion call for vigilance and action against the dismantling of our reproductive freedom and abortion rights. Nearly a decade before the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Goodwin published a pathbreaking article in 2014 in the California Law Review, warning about the evolving “constitutional battleground” threatening reproductive freedom.
Through congressional briefings and testimony before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, Goodwin has courageously used her voice to elevate the concerns of those on the margins of our society and stand as a defender of civil liberties and civil rights.