Jill Goodman

Jill Goodman came to WRP "pretty much right from law school," thanks to WRP attorney Susan Deller Ross, who had taught a course on women in the law at NYU while Goodman was a student. An Arthur Garfield Hays Civil Liberties fellow, just as Ross herself had been, Goodman graduated NYU in 1975 and joined her former professor at WRP from 1976 to 1979.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then a professor at Columbia herself, was directing WRP throughout that time. "I learned a tremendous amount about lawyering from her," Goodman says of Ginsburg. "She taught me so much about using words precisely, to mean exactly what I want them to mean, no more, no less."

Just working with the future Supreme Court Justice was a learning experience: "She has an aura about her, of intelligence and care -- care about the law, and the craft of lawyering, and the trajectory of the law." Goodman admits at times "It was scary," working for Ginsburg, who was "meticulous" about everything she did. In fact, "Ruth was almost a different species," Goodman jokes.

At WRP, Goodman, childless at the time, watched the other attorneys negotiating their roles as lawyers and mothers. She recalls Ginsburg doing final edits on a Supreme Court brief the evening before Thanksgiving with an eye on the clock, keenly aware of just when her college-age daughter would be arriving home–obviously eager to see her daughter, but steadfastly committed to finishing the work at hand without compromise.

Others at WRP were also balancing careers with growing families, and the office housed a child-care center. Susan Deller Ross and Kathleen Peratis nursed and cared for babies in the office, with the help of hired sitters. "It was wild," Goodman recalls of the lawyers working with their children by their side. "Now that I've had my own children, I realize how really wild that was." At the time, Goodman contributed to the child care on occasion. "I can remember taking a stroller out when Susan needed to work," she recalls.

In her work, Goodman found that she was learning from her clients as well as her coworkers. She sought women's equal treatment in the military, though she initially approached this work with uneasiness. "I came of age in an antiwar era," she explains. "We weren't just antiwar. We were anti-military. But I learned from our plaintiffs about the role of the military, not just in society, but in the personal lives of citizens." Goodman elaborates, "The military is a remarkable opportunity for many people in this country. It helps them to get out of small towns; to gain education, job training and experience; to serve; and to achieve status in their eyes and the eyes of the world." With a predominately male military that excludes women from combat, "women are deprived of that credential." Goodman describes how the experience of getting to know her plaintiffs, both officers and enlisted women, broadened her perspective. "I've never felt the same way about the military since," she acknowledges.

Goodman did not choose her own cases while at WRP. "I was far too junior to dream of doing something like that," she confesses. But under Ginsburg's direction, she was part of the push to develop the jurisprudence protecting women's rights to equal protection under the Constitution. She describes Ross as "such a leader, and so knowledgeable," as was Peratis.

Goodman eventually left WRP for a brief teaching stint and later for a job with the Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education. She then worked for eight years at the NYS Attorney General's Office. During her tenure there she got married and had three children.

Goodman says that, naively, as a young lawyer, she never anticipated she would feel "such intense conflicts between my obligations to my job and my obligations at home." After her third child, Goodman decided she couldn't litigate full time, instead opting for part-time work until recently. She confesses that she certainly wouldn't have anticipated such a conflict back when she first witnessed her coworkers starting families.

Today, Goodman works for the New York State Judicial Committee on Women in the Court. "My job is ill-defined," Goodman confesses, "which is why I've been able to do so much." Much of her time is spent addressing violence against women, including domestic violence, sexual violence and the closely related issues of prostitution and trafficking. WRP did not specifically confront these issues during her tenure; however, Goodman says, "I have come to believe they are at the root of the unequal status of women, both as its cause and effect." WRP agrees, and fighting violence against women is an important part of its agenda today.

In terms of what she feels is left to do for the advancement of women, "I hardly know where to begin," Goodman sighs. "I'm constantly involved in answering that question for my job." When it comes to the work-family conflicts that women face, Goodman feels "we haven't begun to get the answers." In this context, Goodman particularly applauds Ginsburg's approach of using male clients to demonstrate that work and family conflicts harm both genders. "As long as caring for kids -- or violence against women, for that matter -- is considered a women's issue, not a human issue, we're never going to fix it."