Robert D. Goldstein

Professor of Law

  • B.A. Harvard, 1969
  • M.Ed. Harvard Clinical Psychology & Public Practice Program, 1976
  • J.D. Harvard, 1977
  • UCLA Faculty Since 1983

Robert Goldstein teaches Constitutional Law I and II, and in the past has taught Child Abuse and Neglect, Civil Rights, Law and Psychiatry, Children and the Law, and Constitutional Criminal Procedure.  He helped originate and direct a campus-wide interdisciplinary program on abuse and neglect.

Professor Goldstein is a committed member of the law school and university communities whose distinguished and superior administrative service is highly valued.  For more than a decade he has served as Special Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Personnel, and prior to that he was Associate Dean of UCLA School of Law for four years.  He has served on a variety of campus-wide and law school committees, including recently co-chairing the Law School’s Task Force on the Learning Environment and Diversity (LEAD). 

Professor Goldstein’s scholarship concerns constitutional law and abuse and neglect.  His two books are Mother-Love and Abortion, A Legal Interpretation (UC Press, 1988) and Child Abuse and Neglect: Cases and Materials (West, 1999).  Other writings span Reconstruction legal history, free speech of professionals, and reproductive rights.  He is currently at work on an essay on the establishment clause.

Goldstein earned his J.D. from Harvard in 1977.  Before law school he obtained his B.A. in Social Studies from Harvard (magna cum laude), and his M.Ed. from Harvard’s Clinical Psychology and Public Practice Program.  He also participated in a clinical internship through Harvard Medical School while completing all the requirements for a Ph.D. in clinical psychology except the dissertation.  Following law school, Goldstein clerked for Chief Judge Raymond Pettine of the Federal District Court of Rhode Island, and then practiced law with the firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot for five years before joining the UCLA School of Law faculty in 1983.

Bibliography

  • Books
    • Child Abuse and Neglect: Cases and Materials. West Publishing (1999).
    • Mother-Love and Abortion: A Legal Interpretation. University of California Press (1988).
  • Articles And Chapters
    • The Structural Wall of Separation and The Erroneous Claim of Anti-Catholic Discrimination, 13 Cardozo Public Law, Policy and Ethics Journal 173 (2014). Full Text
    • Picturing the Life Course of Procreative Choices, 58 UCLA Law Review Discourse 5 (2010). Full Text
    • Contributor, in Encyclopedia of the American Constitution: Supplement I and 2nd ed., (edited by Leonard W. Levy, Kenneth L. Karst, et al., Macmillan, 1992, 2000).
    • Reading Casey: Structuring the Woman's Decisionmaking Process, 4 William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal 787-880 (1996).
    • Blyew: Variations on a Jurisdictional Theme, 41 Stanford Law Review 469-566 (1989).
    • A Swann Song for Remedies: Equitable Relief in the Burger Court, 13 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 1-80 (1978).
  • Other
    • Letter to the Editor, 340 New England Journal of Medicine 895 (Mar. 18, 1999).
    • Book Review, 2 Constitution 75 (1990). Reviewing Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes, by Laurence H. Tribe.
    • Testimony on the Proposed Balanced Budget/Tax Limitation Constitutional Amendment, 79-86, S.J. Res. 5. Before the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 98th Congress, 1st and 2nd Sessions (1984).