"I think that visibility is somewhat in the eyes of the beholder, quite honestly," Rudenstine said. "If you were going to go around the Faculty and ask if they knew her, she is as well known as any person."
However, the president admitted that "there aren't many occasions when she's asked to talk to students" and that he could not recall an incident when Marshall had met with students.
Still, some of Marshall's fans believe her interests in human rights and public access to the courts will naturally come to the fore in her new role as a jurist--instincts which may have come under pressure in her capacity as Harvard's lawyer.
"She's a person with a long history of human-rights work," said Ernest Winsor, a staff attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute who has known Marshall since the 1970s. "Then she went to Harvard and was sort of out of the loop with the political-advocacy legal scene. Now she goes into it with a very important position."
And others say Marshall, a Cambridge resident, can be charming in person. Weld praised her culinary bravery: Once, the governor recalled, he and Julia Child were guests at Marshall's home, and Marshall served lamb chops.
"Anybody who will set a cooked meal in front of Julia Child shows considerable courage," Weld joked.
Marshall is married to New York Times columnist and former Crimson executive J. Anthony Lewis '48; the couple has no children. Marshall's mother, Hilary, also lives in Cambridge. Her sister, Bridget de Bruyn, is a financial consultant in Dallas, and her brother, Hugh Marshall, is a conservationist in South Africa and Zimbabwe.