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.