Rupa Goswami

Hon. Rupa Searight Goswami – the first South Asian woman on the bench in the state of California -- was appointed by Governor Edmund G. Brown, Jr. in 2013. Born in India, Goswami grew up in rural Ohio and Florida. Prior to joining the bench, she served as a federal prosecutor at the United States Attorney’s Office for more than 11 years where she earned the Director’s Award. As an AUSA, Goswami was recognized by the former Attorney General Eric Holder, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Humane Society for her work tackling cyber fraud, environmental crimes, child sex tourism, and crimes involving endangered species. Prior to becoming a federal prosecutor, Goswami clerked for Justice Nora M. Manella, then a United States District Judge and for Terence T. Evans of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She was also a litigation associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. A graduate of the University of Chicago and UCLA School of Law, Goswami holds both an MBA in Finance and Accounting from the Booth School of Business and a JD. Prior to joining the legal profession, she was a banker in Chicago. Since moving to Los Angeles, Goswami has been active in community service, serving on the California State Bar JNE commission, as a pro tem judge, a juvenile teen court moderator and an adjunct professor of trial advocacy at Loyola Law School. Currently, she is a lecturer in law at USC Gould School of Law, serves the Los Angeles Superior court as an elected member of the Executive Committee, works on the Asian Pacific American Bar Association (“APABA”) judicial pipeline project, and in 2017 SAT pro tem as a Justice on the California Court of Appeal. A past co-president of the South Asian Bar Association of Southern California (“SABA”), Goswami now heads SABA-SC’s Steering Committee. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, children, and elderly parents.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

The New York Times
October 15, 2019
Re: Edward McCaffery

Edward McCaffery was quoted on the proposal of having the inheritance taxes on wealthy descendants. The article argued that there has been some issues with the estate tax that the number of descendants this tax applied to has dropped 99%. McCaffery described it as being almost a “voluntary tax.”

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Nomi Stolzenberg
July, 2019

Nomi Stolzenberg, "Anne Dailey and the New Fictionalism," 36th Annual Congress of Law and Mental Health, Rome, Italy.

Thomas D. Lyon
July, 2019

"Effects of the Putative Confession Instruction on Perceptions of Children's True and False Statements" (with Jennifer Gongola and Nicholas Scurich), Applied Cognitive Psychology 33 (2019): 655.

Thomas D. Lyon
July, 2019

"Children’s Concealment of a Minor Transgression: The Role of Age, Maltreatment, and Executive Functioning" (with Shanna Williams and Kelly McWilliams), Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.