Maria Marcus, Public Interest Lawyer and Professor, Dies at 88

Maria Marcus, a legislation professor who as a general public desire attorney defended civil rights in the South and properly argued six cases in advance of the United States Supreme Courtroom representing New York State, in one occasion successful unemployment advantages for placing staff, died on April 27 at her home in Manhattan. She was 88.

Her demise was verified by her daughter Valerie Marcus.

Professor Marcus argued the cases just before the Supreme Court representing the New York attorney standard. She was an assistant legal professional general from 1967 to 1978 and main of the office’s litigation bureau from 1976 to 1978.

In early 1979, the court docket agreed, 6-to-3, in New York Phone v. New York Point out Section of Labor, that the condition was empowered to require organizations to pay unemployment rewards to placing staff. (Professor Marcus argued the circumstance in 1978.)

The justices rejected the argument by the cellphone business that since the legislation implicitly favored labor over management, it had to yield to federal labor rules calling for governmental neutrality. In its ruling, the court affirmed an appellate court’s determination that held that even while the law placed the condition on the aspect of labor through a strike, Congress had not imposed a uniform countrywide plan on jobless benefits for strikers, leaving it to the states to decide.

According to the Supreme Courtroom Historic Society, of the 160 gals who have argued just before the courtroom considering the fact that 1880, only eight appeared extra than Professor Marcus. She was tied for ninth position with five legal professionals, such as Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for the most arguments by a female just before the court from 1880 to 1980.

She taught at the Fordham University School of Regulation from 1978 until eventually her retirement in 2011. She was only the second girl to grow to be a tenured full professor there.

Professor Marcus moderated Fordham’s award-profitable moot court plan for 42 several years. In 1995, a workforce of hers gained the Nationwide Moot Court Level of competition sponsored by the New York Metropolis Bar Affiliation and the American University of Demo Legal professionals.

She was credited with producing 1 of the earliest legislation overview article content on domestic violence, “Conjugal Violence: The Law of Drive and the Pressure of Legislation,” in 1981.

Decide Nicholas Garaufis of Federal District Court docket in Brooklyn, who was a co-counsel on the unemployment rewards scenario before the Supreme Court, described Professor Marcus in a phone job interview as a “rigorous litigator who was a perfectionist, but a greatly affected individual mentor.”

Matthew Diller, the dean of Fordham’s law college, wrote in an email that her “main legacy is in the generations of pupils whom she taught — stressing the values of integrity, clarity and precision and a feeling of joy in the intellectual back and forth of reasoned argument that is lawful advocacy at its best.”

Maria Eleanor Erica Lenhoff was born on June 23, 1933, in Vienna. Her father, Arthur Lenhoff, was a decide on the Austrian Constitutional Court docket, the nation’s maximum tribunal. Her mother, Clara (Gruber) Lenhoff, was a homemaker.

On the day that Austria was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938, the household fled, first to Switzerland, then to England and ultimately to the United States. Her father, a Jew, was on the Gestapo’s wanted list for his legal rulings necessitating spiritual equality in universities — choices that Professor Marcus later likened, in an report, to America’s civil rights circumstance regulation as “Austria’s Pre-War Brown v. Board of Education.”

“Drawing on this practical experience, she experienced a profound perception of the great importance of justice and the rule of regulation,” claimed William M. Treanor, the dean and govt vice president of Georgetown University Regulation Heart. “I discovered a great deal from her work, which blended remarkable erudition with a determination to law as a pressure for good.”

Professor Marcus attained a bachelor’s diploma in English from Oberlin College or university in Ohio in 1954 and graduated in 1957 from Yale Regulation School. There she fulfilled and married Norman Marcus, who turned basic counsel to the New York Town Planning Commission. He died in 2008.

In addition to her daughter Valerie, who is the vice president of legal affairs at RCA Documents, she is survived by two other children, Nicole and Eric Marcus, and six grandchildren.

Professor Marcus served as associate counsel for the N.A.A.C.P.’s nationwide office environment from 1961 to 1967 and litigated substantial civil rights instances in the South. She collaborated with Robert L. Carter, the typical counsel, and Medgar Evers, the N.A.A.C.P. leader in Mississippi.

She was vice president of the Affiliation of the Bar of the Metropolis of New York from 1995 to 1996 and in 1973 headed an affiliation committee that advisable that the Metropolis Council move legislation to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Professor Marcus, colleagues said, experienced an uncanny knack for memorizing the names and faces of her pupils on the very first day of class. Soon after she retired, she ongoing to reasonable Fordham Law’s Moot Courtroom Board for yet another ten years.

Professor James Kainen recalled in a Fordham obituary that her general performance would prompt a frequent lament by the Rev. Joseph A. O’Hare, the former president of Fordham.

“Every yr during his tenure,” Professor Kainen said, “President O’Hare would occur to one of our school conferences and never unsuccessful to bemoan his lack of ability to retain the services of a football mentor who would compile a report approaching that of Maria’s moot court teams.”