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 life Goetz graduated from Textile High School in Chelsea, where she was editor-in-chief of the school paper. 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—and graduated as salutatorian in 1940.

Nuremberg

After initially being rebuffed, Goetz took a job at the Department of Justice in the equivalent of today's Civil Division. She applied to serve as a Nuremberg prosecutor, was rebuffed again at the instance of the Department of War, but was eventually given a "waiver of disability" by Telford Taylor so she could serve. The "disability" was her gender. 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.

She was first involved in the Flick Trial and then became Associate Counsel on the trial of Alfred Krupp, delivering the opening statement on December 8, 1947. She was one of four women on the Nuremberg prosecution team and, as Associate Counsel, she outranked six men. At the time, she observed that "o get a decision in this case would, in my opinion, be a great step toward avoiding future wars." Her chambers were in Happauge, New York. She served until 1993, returning to Herzfeld & Rubin thereafter.

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