Alfred Theodore "Ted" Goodwin was born in 1923 in Bellingham, Washington, the eldest son of Baptist minister Alonzo Goodwin and Miriam Williams Goodwin. Because Alonzo Goodwin frequently moved between congregations in his work, the Goodwin family lived in multiple places in Oregon, Washington, and California during Alfred T. Goodwin's childhood. He graduated from Crook County High School in Prineville, Oregon, in 1940. He then studied at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where he joined the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). His year's ROTC was activated in 1943, and Goodwin served in the European theater during World War II. After the war, he was stationed in the Philippines. He left active service in October 1946, but remained in the Army Reserves until 1969.

After leaving active military service, Goodwin returned to the University of Oregon, where he was editor of the student newspaper, the Daily Emerald, and earned a degree in journalism. He subsequently attended the University of Oregon Law School, where he earned a legum baccalaureus degree in 1949 and a juris doctor degree in 1951. Goodwin joined the Eugene-based firm Darling & Vonderheit. In 1955, Oregon Governor Paul Patterson appointed Goodwin as a Lane County Circuit Court judge. In 1960, Governor Mark Hatfield appointed Goodwin to the Oregon Supreme Court to fill the seat vacated by Justice Hall Stoner Lusk. Goodwin served on that court for almost ten years, during which he ruled in the case of Lowe v. City of Eugene, a challenge to the presence of a large Christian cross on Skinner Butte in Eugene; and in State ex rel. Thornton v. Hay, where Goodwin wrote for the court that Oregon beaches between mean high tide and visible vegetation belong to the public.

In 1969, Hatfield, then a U.S. senator, nominated Goodwin to the U.S. District Court of Oregon, where he served with judges Gus Solomon, Robert Belloni, and Otto Skopil. Just two years later, Goodwin was appointed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, also on Hatfield's recommendation. Goodwin remained on the Ninth Circuit Court for more than 40 years. For 20 years, he was the court's en banc (full bench) coordinator, and from 1988 to 1991, he was the court's chief judge. In 1991, he took senior status, but continued to handle a full load of cases. Goodwin's best-known ruling while on the Ninth Circuit was in the case Newdow v. U.S. Congress, et al, where he held that the inclusion of the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional because it violated separation of church and state. He was also a member of the "spotted owl panel," whose rulings affected timber practices in the Pacific Northwest.

Goodwin married Mary Ellen Handelin in 1949. The couple had four children: Karl, Margaret Ellen, Sara Jane, and James. In addition to his work as a judge, Goodwin raised sheep in Sisters, Oregon. He died in December 2022.

Sources: "A Life in Judging: Ted Goodwin of Oregon," by Stephen L. Wasby (Eastham, Massachussetts: self-published, 2015); "Alfred T. Goodwin (1923-2022)," by Stephen L. Wasby, Oregon Encyclopedia, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/goodwin-alfred-t/