Paul J. Goda, S.J.

Santa Clara University School of Law Professor Emeritus
2008 Edwin J. Owens Lawyer of the Year

Paul Goda, S.J., has dedicated nearly 40 years of his life to Santa Clara University and to its law school. He has proven himself a leader in the campus community through his long record of teaching students to the highest educational standards and encouraging them to use their legal education to benefit society. He has touched the lives of generations of families.

Goda’s parents came to the U.S. from Hungary; subsequently, thirty members of his mother’s family died in the Holocaust; most of his father’s family died in the two World Wars.

Goda attended Beverley Hills Catholic School and Loyola High School before enrolling in Loyola University of Los Angeles. He worked three jobs to pay for college. Upon his graduation in 1952 with a degree in history (magna cum laude), he joined the Air Force as an intelligence officer at the height of the Cold War and in the middle of the Korean War.

Goda began law school at Georgetown in 1954, when he was struggling with whether to marry or become a priest. He entered the Society of Jesus and studied for the priesthood from 1955 to 1968, a difficult time in the U.S. when young people were questioning authority and rethinking vows that Goda’s generation believed to be sacred.

Goda spent two years in what he calls Jesuit "boot camp," then studied classics and philosophy. He earned his second BA from Gonzaga in 1959, his law degree from Georgetown Law Center in 1963, his Master of Sacred Theology from Alma College in Los Gatos in 1967, and an LL.M. from New York University in 1969.

Since 1969, Goda has taught contracts, community property, wills and trusts, and jurisprudence at Santa Clara University School of Law.

Goda served on the SCU Board of Trustees for 12 years and twice as president of the University’s Faculty Senate. Outside of SCU, he served for many years as chair of the California Province of the Society of Jesus Committee on Investment Responsibility. He served for nine years on the board of trustees of USF; on the board of Economic and Social Opportunities, Santa Clara County’s anti-poverty agency; the biomedical ethics committee of San Jose Hospital; and on the advisory board for Santa Clara’s Young Parents Center.

Goda is semi-retired, teaching one semester a year. He pursues his love of history and his interest in learning about his family’s background. "God willing," he says, he will visit his mother’s village in Hungary next summer.

Paul Goda's Faculty web page