CHICAGO, August 1, 2022 — Michele Goodwin, a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California Irvine, founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy and a senior lecturer at Harvard Medical School, is a recipient of the American Bar Association’s 2022 Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award.
Goodwin will receive the award, given annually by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, at a ceremony and reception at 3-5:30 p.m. CDT on Sunday, August 7, at the Swissotel Chicago during the 2022 ABA Annual Meeting.
In addition to Goodwin, the 2022 award recipients include Christina L. Martini, Laura J. Schumacher, Myra C. Selby and Wendy Shiba.
“We are honored to recognize this spectacular group of women who have been trailblazers throughout their careers,” said Maureen Mulligan, chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession. “They are role models for all women in the legal profession.”
Goodwin is an elected member of the Hastings Center (the organization central to the founding of bioethics), the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She also is an American Law Institute Advisor for the Restatement Third of Torts: Remedies, and the recipient of the 2020-21 Distinguished Senior Faculty Award for Research, the highest honor bestowed by the University of California.
A former member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine Committee on Issues in Organ Donor Intervention Research, Goodwin was appointed an observer by the United States National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws for the revision of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act. She chaired several sections of the Association of American Law Schools and was the first woman to be elected Secretary General of the International Academy of Law and Mental Health.
Goodwin also directed the first ABA-accredited health law program and established the first law center focused on race and bioethics. She is the author of “Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood” (2020); “Biotechnology, Bioethics, and The Law” (2015); “Baby Markets: Money and the Politics of Creating Families” (2010); and “Black Markets: The Supply and Demand of Body Parts” (2006). She has also written more than100 articles, essays, book chapters and commentaries.
Goodwin is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, where she earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees, and earned her law degree Boston College Law School. She is also a Gilder Lehrman post-doctoral scholar from Yale University.
For a photo of Michele Goodwin, click here.
The ABA Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement Award, established in 1991, honors outstanding women lawyers who have achieved professional excellence in their area of specialty and have actively paved the way to success for other women in the profession. The award is named for Margaret Brent, the first woman lawyer in America. Brent arrived in the colonies in 1638 and was involved in 124 court cases in more than eight years, winning every case.
The ABA is the largest voluntary association of lawyers in the world. As the national voice of the legal profession, the ABA works to improve the administration of justice, promotes programs that assist lawyers and judges in their work, accredits law schools, provides continuing legal education, and works to build public understanding around the world of the importance of the rule of law.