Frank Ira Goodman, an emeritus professor of law in the Penn Carey Law School, died on December 26, 2025. He was 93.

Born in 1932 in Omaha, Nebraska, Mr. Goodman graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in San Antonio, Texas, and then attended Harvard University, where he played varsity tennis and graduated summa cum laude. He went on to study philosophy, politics, and economics as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, earning a master’s degree in 1956. He returned to the U.S. to earn his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1959, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Mr. Goodman was a clerk for Judge William H. Hastie, the first African American appointee to the federal appellate bench and one of President John F. Kennedy’s final candidates for the Supreme Court, on the Third Circuit. 

Mr. Goodman briefly practiced entertainment law at a small Beverly Hills firm from 1960 to 1962, representing Hollywood heavyweights Gregory Peck, Marlon Brando, Jimmy Stewart, the Marx Brothers, Grace Kelly, and Alfred Hitchcock, among others. He then returned to the east coast, where he took a position as a government lawyer in President Kennedy’s Federal Power Commission (now the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) before joining Solicitor General Archibald Cox’s eight-lawyer staff. In 1965, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, where he taught courses in constitutional law, torts, poverty law, and trusts/estates until 1972. After serving for a year as research director of the Administrative Conference of the United States—a small agency that brought together lawyers, judges, and academics to study and recommend reforms of the federal administrative process, Mr. Goodman came to Penn’s Law School in 1973.

Initially a visiting professor and then, beginning in 1975, a full professor, Mr. Goodman taught Constitutional Law, Federal Courts, and Constitutional Theory. As the school noted in 2014, “Prof. Goodman is a Law School legend, as well-known (and beloved) for his occasional forgetfulness as for the intellectual playfulness and depth of his thinking about topics as diverse as constitutional law, legal philosophy, administrative law, environmental law, sports law, and welfare law.” Mr. Goodman was known to stay after class with students, debating the fine points of the law and advanced constitutional theory, investing time in students’ personal experiences, and writing numerous letters of recommendation. Mr. Goodman retired from Penn in 2014 and took emeritus status. Read recollections of Mr. Goodman from his colleagues and former students here. During the 1980s, Mr. Goodman also taught in Penn’s Graduate School of Education. 

To share a memorial remembrance, visit www.law.upenn.edu/live/news/18228-remembering-frank-goodman. 

Mr. Goodman is survived by his wife of 65 years, Joan; their children, Lisa, Barak, Ellen, and Jonathan; 11 grandchildren; and one great grandson.