Margaret Hilary Marshall's appointment to Massachusetts' highest court caps the 20-year legal career of a South African native who came to the United States in search of political freedom and moved quickly through the ranks of corporate law with a reputation as a brilliant litigator.
Marshall, Harvard's top lawyer since October 1992, is well-respected in Boston's legal community. She has worn many hats: anti-apartheid student activist, Boston Bar Association president and partner at Choate, Hall & Stewart, one of Boston's top firms, specializing in copyright and intellectual-property law.
Rudenstine named Marshall vice president and general counsel in 1992, as the new president filled the ranks of Harvard's top brass with his own appointees. She replaced the affable and energetic Daniel Steiner '54, who had occupied the post since 1971.
At the time of her appointment, Marshall was only the second woman to serve as a Harvard vice president.
Unlike Steiner, Marshall's work has taken place almost entirely behind the scenes and she has had minimal contact with students. She was instrumental in shaping Harvard's stances on sharing financial-aid information with Ivy League schools and on affirmative action.
But as Harvard's top litigator, directing a team of 11 full-time attorneys and responsible for the Harvard Police Department, Mar- Marshall's low profile and her reluctance to speak with campus publications may have contributed to the perception of University officials as unresponsive to bias complaints--despite Marshall's reputation as an advocate for civil rights and racial equality. Like Carter Professor of General Jurisprudence Emeritus Charles Fried--the first appointment of Gov. William F. Weld '66 to the Supreme Judicial Court--Marshall is an immigrant. (Fried's family fled the Nazi regime in Czechoslovakia at the start of World War II.) Marshall, 52, was born to a middle-class South African family in a small rural town called Newcastle in Natal; the only blacks she knew were servants, she said in a 1991 interview. She graduated from the University of Witwatersand in Johannesburg in 1966. For the next two years, she served as president of the 20,000-member National Union of South African Students--described as "a red cancer which should be cut out" by South Africa's premier at the time. At one point, Marshall chauffeured visitors' vans to a prison holding black activists on the outskirts of Cape Town. She also invited Robert F. Kennedy '48 to South Africa to speak to student groups. Nelson Mandela's African National Congress was banned at that time, and the students' union was the only legal multiracial national group in the country. After arriving in the United States in 1968, Marshall's criticism of the racial inequities and repressive police brutality of apartheid South Africa grew increasingly vocal, making a return to her homeland impossible. "At that time, advocating sanctions against South Africa was a treasonable offense, and so I was not able to return to South Africa because of my activities in the United States," Marshall said at a news conference Tuesday, when Weld announced her nomination. Marshall enrolled at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she earned a master's degree in 1969. She remained a doctoral candidate at the school until 1973, when she left Harvard for Yale Law School. She spent the 1975-76 school year at Harvard Law School, and received her degree from Yale in 1976. She joined the Massachusetts bar--and became a U.S. citizen--in 1977. Marshall embarked on a successful career in civil litigation, serving as an associate and partner at Csaplar & Bok from 1976 to 1989, and then as a partner at Choate, Hall & Stewart from 1989 to 1992. She is considered a top expert in copyright and intellectual-property law. Read more in News
