Maria Marcus (1933-2022)

Joseph M. McLaughlin Chair and Professor of Law

photo of Maria L. Marcus 240x240

Years of Service
1978-2011

Marcus was a trailblazing civil rights advocate for the N.A.A.C.P., a renowned appellate advocate who argued before the Supreme Court six times, and an esteemed Fordham Law professor who was revered by generations of Fordham Law School students and cherished by her fellow faculty members and colleagues.

  • Biography

    Of the 150 women who have argued before the Supreme Court only eight appeared more than Professor Marcus. During her 42-year tenure at Fordham Law School, she was known for her brilliant, masterful teaching and for coaching a record number of winning moot court teams.

    Before joining the Fordham Law faculty, Marcus had a distinguished legal career, serving as a fellow with the New York Bar Foundation, associate counsel for the NAACP’s national office from 1961 to 1967, assistant attorney general for New York State from 1967 to 1978, chief of the litigation bureau for the attorney general of New York State from 1976 to 1978, and vice president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1995 to 1996.

    Memoriam Maria Marcus

    As one of the leading Supreme Court advocates in the 1970s, she argued—and won—six cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of New York State, including New York Telephone v. New York State Department of Labor (1979), which secured unemployment benefits for striking workers. A drawing that memorialized the moment hung in her Upper West Side home.

    Even after her retirement from Fordham Law in 2011, she continued to serve as moderator to the Moot Court Board and devoted countless hours to coaching and mooting numerous competitors until 2021. In recent years, students would go to Marcus’ apartment to practice their presentations and receive the benefits of her critique and advice.

    Memoriam Maria Marcus Moot CourtMaria Marcus and Dean John D. Feerick ’61 after winning the National Moot Court competition in 1995


    Professor Marcus, by the example of her career, modeled the highest values of Fordham Law School and a Jesuit institution—intellectual rigor combined with a commitment to advance social justice. Professor Marcus’s family fled Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938. She attended Oberlin College and Yale Law School. 

    Marcus received the Dean’s Medal of Recognition from then Dean Michael M. Martin in 2011. As he presented her the medal, Martin said of her,

    “She insists … on excellence. Thus, she is doing more than preparing her students for moot court competitions; she is preparing them to be great lawyers—Fordham lawyers.”

     

    Memoriam Maria MarcusDean Michael M. Martin presenting the Dean’s Medal of Recognition to Marcus in 2011.

  • Selected Publications

    Austria's Pre-War Brown v. Board of Education, Fordham Urban Law Journal (2004)

    Policing Speech on the Airwaves: Granting Rights, Preventing Wrongs, Fordham Law Review (1996).

    Federal Habeas Corpus After State Court Default: A Definition of Cause and Prejudice, Fordham Law Review (1985).

    Union Discrimination Checked: Ethridge v. Rhodes Rouses a Slumbering Giant Leading Article, Faculty Scholarship (1968).