Arthur Lehman Goodhart (1891-1978) was born in New York City, the son of a prominent Wall Street stockbroker and the nephew on his mother's side of Herbert Lehman, governor of New York and later senator, and of Irving Lehman, chief judge of the New York Court of Appeals. He was educated at Hotchkiss School and Yale University, from which he graduated with distinction, and in 1912 came to England to study at Trinity College, Cambridge. His original intention was to read economics, but being advised against having J. Maynard Keynes as a tutor, he chose law instead, thereby laying the foundations of what was to be a distinguished legal career in this country. After the outbreak of the First World War, he returned to New York and practised law there until the United States entered the war, when he returned to Europe as a member of the American forces and by chance renewed his acquaintance with his former law tutor at Trinity, Henry Hollond, who encouraged him to return to Cambridge after the war. In 1919, therefore, Goodhart accepted an appointment as a fellow of Corpus Christi College and University lecturer in law. In 1921 he helped to found the Cambridge Law Journal.His skilled editorship of the Journalled to his replacing Sir Frederick Pollock, at the latter's behest, as editor of the prestigious Law Quarterly Reviewin 1926, a position he held for fifty years. His main interest lay in the common law, but at Cambridge he found himself lecturing in jurisprudence, and thus was led to Oxford in 1931 when the Chair of Jurisprudence (attached to University College) became vacant. He gave up the Chair in 1951 on his appointment as Master of University College, serving, as the first American to head an Oxbridge college, until 1963, but even after his retirement he maintained firm links with the college, which he and his family endowed handsomely. He also continued to write about the law, and was much in demand as a lecturer on both sides of the Atlantic.

Goodhart also made a reputation as a great exponent of Anglo-American friendship and co-operation, which was reflected in his own life and career. In 1924 he married an English wife, Cecily Carter, and although he made regular and frequent visits to the United States and maintained firm links with his American contacts, England provided the main arena for his activities. He spent the war years largely in England, where he worked hard promoting the British cause among his countrymen, and in 1948 he was made an honorary KBE in recognition of 'outstanding services in the common interests of our two countries' (MS. Eng. c. 2836, fol. 2), services which continued throughout his life. He always remained an American citizen, but this did not prevent him from serving from 1940 to 1951 as Chairman of the Southern Region Local Price Regulation Committee and on many other important committees on this side of the Atlantic during his career, among them the Royal Commission on the Police and innumerable legal committees. In 1938 he was made an Honorary Bencher of Lincoln's Inn and in 1943 a King's Counsel, only the second American ever to be so distinguished, and he was honoured by a great number of universities in the English-speaking world.