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Margaret H. Marshall. Photograph by Jon Chase
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On September 3, Massachusetts governor William Weld '66, J.D. '70, confirmed
advance press reports when he nominated Harvard vice president and general
counsel Margaret H. Marshall, Ed.M. '69, to a vacant seat on the Commonwealth's
Supreme Judicial Court (see Brevia, September-October 1996, page
77). (Confirmation hearings, expected to go well, were occurring as
this issue went to press.)
Marshall is a native of South Africa who as a college student in Johannesburg
actively protested apartheid. Now an American citizen, she graduated from
Yale Law School in 1976 and worked for corporate law firms in Boston
before becoming Harvard's general counsel in 1992. While president of the
Boston Bar Association in 1991, Marshall was highly critical of Weld's attempts
to restore the death penalty in Massachusetts.
Among the newsmaking events of Marshall's tenure at Harvard were the decision
in 1995 to rescind an oer of admission to high-school senior Gina Grant,
whose college application did not disclose the fact that she had been convicted
of killing her mother; a report investigating allegations of racial discrimination
within the University police department's guard unit (which found the allegations
to be unfounded); and a sex-discrimination case against Harvard Law School
by former assistant professor of law Clare Dalton (settled out of court).
President Neil L. Rudenstine called Marshall's anticipated departure "a
great loss for Harvard," but hailed the appointment as "wonderful
news for the court and for the people of Massachusetts." Marshall,
he said, "has all the abilities and human qualities to be a distinguished
judge." A search has begun to select her successor.
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