Cecelia Goetz
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. Early lifeGoetz 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] NurembergAfter 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] Private practice and governmentAfter 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] Judicial careerGoetz 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] Works
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