 
Joseph Goldstein
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his work in family law, dies
Joseph Goldstein, Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and the Derald H. Ruttenberg Professorial Lecturer in Law, died on March 12 at Yale New Haven Hospital after being stricken at home.
An alumnus of the Law School and a member of its faculty for nearly 50 years, Professor Goldstein was known as a tireless and devoted teacher among his students and colleagues.
"Joe Goldstein was a towering figure in the law and the beloved teacher of several generations of students at the Yale Law School," said Dean Anthony T. Kronman. "Joe will be remembered, of course, for his profound and original contributions to family law and constitutional theory, and for his pioneering work at the intersection of law and psychoanalysis.
"But even more importantly, he will be remembered for his inspiring integrity, his indefatigable commitment to follow the true calling of his own fiercely independent mind, and for his loving encouragement of all his students to be similarly faithful to themselves," added Kronman. "This was Joe's greatest gift to all who worked and studied with him. It is a gift on which we shall have occasion to draw again and again in the years to come."
Professor Goldstein was a prolific author on a wide and varied range of topics. He wrote or edited a number of books on criminal law, including a 1962 casebook "Criminal Law" (with Richard Donnelly and Richard D. Schwartz); "Crime, Law and Society" (with Abraham S. Goldstein), published in 1971; and "Criminal Law, Theory and Process" (with Alan M. Dershowitz and Richard D. Schwartz), which was published in 1974.
With Law School professor Burke Marshall and Jack Schwartz, he wrote "The My Lai Massacre and Its Cover Up: Beyond the Reach of Law?" which was published in 1976. This book grew out of discussions in a class, "Limits of the Law," that Professor Goldstein co-taught with Professor Marshall (and, later, with Justice Aharon Barak, president of the Supreme Court of Israel).
Professor Goldstein also wrote and taught in constitutional law. His book "The Intelligible Constitution -- The Supreme Court's Obligation to Maintain the Constitution as Something We the People Can Understand" was published by Oxford University Press in 1992 and first released in a paperback edition in 1995.
But perhaps Professor Goldstein's greatest impact on legal scholarship and practice was in the area of intersection among the disciplines of law, psychiatry and psychoanalysis. In a 1974 profile that appeared in the Yale Law Report, Professor Goldstein is quoted as saying "I am a lawyer, who happens to be an analyst."
The origins of this avenue of study can be traced all the way back to Professor Goldstein's earliest professional activity. After graduating from the Law School in 1952, he clerked for a year for Judge David L. Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. At the time, Bazelon was focused on issues surrounding the insanity defense and the emphasis the law puts on state of mind rather than criminal act. In the year following his clerkship, Professor Goldstein prepared memoranda on the issues raised by the Durham case, a landmark opinion in which the District of Columbia adopted a new formulation of the insanity defense. Later in life, in 1968, Professor Goldstein completed his psychoanalytic training at the Western New England Psychoanalytic Institute.
For 10 years, Professor Goldstein worked side by side with Law School professor (and psychiatrist) Jay Katz, a specialist in family law and in psychoanalysis and the law. Out of their collaboration came two books. The first of these, "The Family and the Law," published in 1965, was the first casebook designed for students of law to examine the interactions between family and psychoanalysis as an important area of inquiry. As the book's preface notes: "[This book] examines and evaluates the interaction between two of man's creations for the development and social control of human beings, the family and the law." The second book from the Goldstein-Katz collaboration was "Psychoanalysis, Psychiatry and Law," published in 1966 (co-authored with Alan Dershowitz). In this book, the authors noted, "We, as students of law, seek to identify the assumptions reflected in and by law about the nature of man, his motivations, his capacities and his limitations, and to compare them with the assumptions of a single theory of man, psychoanalysis."
Following his work with Jay Katz, and as an outgrowth of the intellectual inquiry begun in that work, Professor Goldstein embarked on a new project with Albert J. Solnit, then director of the Yale Child Study Center, and with Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud. From this professional collaboration came three groundbreaking books on the topic of the relationship (legal and otherwise) between children and their adult parents: "Beyond the Best Interests of the Child" (first published in 1973, with a new edition issued in 1979), "Before the Best Interests of the Child" (1979) and "In the Best Interests of the Child" (1986). The volumes have been widely cited by legal scholars and practitioners alike, and have been translated into numerous languages.
Professor Goldstein's last book, a compendium of the topics discussed in the "Best Interests" trilogy, was called "The Best Interests of the Child -- The Least Detrimental Alternative," (first published in 1996; issued in paperback in 1998). In these final two publishing projects, Professor Goldstein's wife, Sonja Goldstein, joined the three original authors as a co-author.
Born in 1923 in Springfield, Massachusetts, Joseph Goldstein received an A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1943.
After graduating from Dartmouth, Professor Goldstein served with the U.S. Army in World War II, where he was stationed in occupied Japan. He served in the Second Signal Service Battalion, the precursor to the National Security Agency, working on breaking Japanese codes. One of his colleagues in this endeavor was Burke Marshall, who later became his colleague at the Law School.
Following the war, Professor Goldstein entered Yale Law School, but took time off following his first year of legal studies to attend the London School of Economics, earning his Ph.D. there in 1950. He was a Fulbright Scholar in 194950. It was at the London School of Economics that he met his future wife and collaborator, Sonja, who later was also his classmate at Yale. He then returned to New Haven and earned his LL.B. from the Law School, where he was article and book review editor of the Yale Law Journal.
After his clerkship with Judge David L. Bazelon, Professor Goldstein served briefly as an acting assistant professor at Stanford Law School and a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School before joining the Yale faculty as associate professor of law in 1956.
At Yale, Goldstein was professor of law from 1959 to 1967. In 1968, he was named the Justus H. Hotchkiss Professor of Law. One year later, he became the Walton Hale Hamilton Professor of Law, Science and Social Policy, a position he held for 10 years until he was named Sterling Professor of Law in 1978. He was also appointed a professor at the Yale Child Study Center in 1976. He became Sterling Professor Emeritus in 1993, but continued his teaching and research at Yale Law School as the Derald H. Ruttenberg Professorial Lecturer in Law.
Beyond his scholarly pursuits, Professor Goldstein took part in a great number of public service activities. One of the many organizations to which the scholar devoted his time, compassion, and expertise was the Friends of the Library of the Supreme Court of Israel. At the time of his death he had served as president of that organization since 1996. Since 1978 he served on the board of directors of the New Haven Legal Assistance Association, Inc. He was also a member of the board of the Friends of Legal Services of South Central Connecticut, and was its president in 198182. He served as a board member of the Sigmund Freud Archives from 1968 until the present. In 1966, he became, a founding board member of the Vera Institute of Justice in New York City, an organization dedicated to urban and social reform and to encouraging just practice in public services. His service to that board continued until the time of his death.
Professor Goldstein was often recognized for his scholarship and his contributions to the field of law. A fellow of the American Academy of Art and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine, he was also the recipient of the Charles J. Parker Legal Services Award of the Connecticut Bar Association in 1983. In 1984, the American Psychoanalytic Association conferred upon him honorary membership "in recognition of his contribution to psychoanalysis as a scholar and teacher as applied to the fields of law and psychiatry." He received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Law of Goethe University in 1985; and a Special Achievement Award from the New Haven Legal Assistance Association in 1989. In 1990, the International Academy of Law and Mental Health presented him with the Philippe Pinel Award .
Professor Goldstein is survived by his wife and frequent co-author, the former Sonja Lambek; four children: Joshua of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Anne of Hartford, Connecticut, Jeremiah of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Daniel of Davis, California; and eight grandchildren. Also surviving are a brother, E. Ernest Goldstein of Texas; and a sister, Miriam Sommer of New Haven.
A service for Professor Goldstein was held on March 14 at Temple Mishkan Israel. Interment was at the Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven. A memorial service at the Law School is planned at a later date.
Memorial contributions may be made to New Haven Legal Assistance Association and to the Friends of the Library of the Supreme Court of Israel.
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