BROOKLYN LAW NOTES
Fall 2019

Professor Cynthia Godsoe Receives Tenure

PROFESSOR CYNTHIA GODSOE, a career-long advocate for the rights of children and families, was granted tenure last spring.

Godsoe teaches courses on family law, criminal law, children and the law, and professional responsibility, as well as a seminar on sex crimes. The media, including the New York Times and Time Magazine, have frequently consulted Godsoe on juvenile justice and family law issues.

“I feel incredibly fortunate,” said Godsoe. “Teaching at Brooklyn Law School is the best job in the world. The students are amazingly energetic and thoughtful, my colleagues are generous and interesting, and Brooklyn is the best place in the world to live and work. Interacting with students—and seeing them develop into such leaders in their field—is so rewarding.”

Her scholarship centers on the regulation of intimate behavior and gender roles through family and criminal law, encompassing topics such as the path to marriage equality, the designation of victims and offenders in intimate violence, and the criminalization of non-conforming girls. Her recent work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal Forum, Tulane Law Review, and California Law Review Circuit, among others.

Before joining the Brooklyn Law School faculty in 2007, Godsoe represented children and youth in impact litigation and individual cases in juvenile justice, education, and child protection matters as an attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Juvenile Rights Division and Advocates for Children. Following law school, she clerked in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York for Judge Edward Korman ’67 and was a Skadden Public Interest Fellow. She was chair of the Juvenile Justice Committee of the New York City Bar from 2008 to 2011 and continues to participate in pro bono work on a variety of issues for low-income and marginalized children and families.

In spring 2020, Godsoe will publish an article on the downside of criminal responses to sexual harms in a symposium issue of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law.