Louis Marshall (December 14, 1856 – September 11, 1929) was an American corporate, constitutional and civil rights lawyer as well as a mediator and Jewish community leader who worked to secure religious, political, and cultural freedom for all minority groups.

[2] Founded just eight years earlier, in 1847, Syracuse was a booming transportation, financial, and manufacturing hub on the Erie Canal, as the United States expanded West.

"[7] From New York City, Jacob Marshall had "worked his way up the Erie Canal to Syracuse, where he opened a hide, fur, and leather business.

"[11] Louis' mother, Zilli (or Zella), was "well educated for her times ... reading to [her children] in German, Schiller, Scott and Hugo, the standard literature of mid-century.

[17] Upon high school graduation, Marshall "began the study of law, in accordance with the fashion of that day, in a lawyer's office, that of Nathaniel B. Smith",[13] where he served a two-year apprenticeship.

Later, when Ruger was appointed chief justice of the New York State Court of Appeals,[21] "the law firm became Jenny, Brooks & Marshall.

It was his habit to have lunch and relax at Monch's Restaurant with a group of lawyers during the work-week, where they would debate each other, with Loewenstein, the waiter, serving as Judge and jury.

A justice of the Supreme Court was the only elected or appointed office Marshall had ever wanted or sought; Taft eventually chose two other men for the positions.

[26] In 1914, he was part of the legal team representing Leo Frank, a Jewish pencil factory manager convicted of raping and murdering a 13-year-old employee named Mary Phagan.

"[29] In 1905, Marshall was promoted to chairman of the board of directors of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Conservative Judaism's rabbinical school.

There, he helped formulate clauses for the "full and equal civil, religious, political, and national rights" of Jews in the constitutions of the newly created states of eastern Europe.

Although he had some differences with political Zionists, Marshall contributed to efforts that led to the establishment of Israel as a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

In 1920, Marshall also attempted to stop a newspaper owned by Henry Ford, The Dearborn Independent, from spreading anti-Semitic propaganda.

[37] Marshall and Untermyer entered the fight against the alleged libelous attacks featured in the paper, which led to a 1927 lawsuit against the automaker in federal court.

"In 1890, at the age of thirty-four, he was appointed by Governor Hill to a special commission to revise the judiciary article of the [New York state] constitution ...".

[38] In 1902, Marshall was appointed chairman of a commission investigating the slum conditions on New York City's Lower East Side, where many Jewish immigrants had settled.

Defending the rights of Negro voters, he secured a ruling of the Supreme Court in the case of Nixon v. Herndon that the Texas white primary law was unconstitutional.

The efforts of highway builders to slash roads through the woods, of power interests to divert the rivers to their own use, and of hunters and fishermen to act without restraint all met his unqualified opposition.

In an intervention at the US Supreme Court, he had a key influence on a landmark case underscoring the right and responsibility of the Federal government for environmental protection and conservation.

The wild life of the forest, the fishes that were once abundant in our streams are threatened with extermination unless there is a speedy remedy ..."[55] At a more personal level, Marshall took a keen interest in the natural environment.

He was suspicious of politicians like Theodore Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson who choreographed their political campaigns to appeal emotionally to the masses; and he considered those in favor of a direct primary or a referendum "misguided", "demagogues" or "rogues".

They lived comfortably in a three-story brownstone house at Number 47 East 72nd Street[8] in Manhattan, a block and a half from Central Park; the US Census of 1900 indicates that four servants resided with the Marshalls at this address.

[61] In 1899, together with five other families, the Marshalls bought 500 acres (2.0 km2) of shoreline on Lower Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks and hired architect William L. Coulter to design and build a "great camp" to be called Knollwood.

[63]Upon Florence Lowenstein Marshall's death of cancer on May 27, 1916, at age 43, daughter Ruth became surrogate mother for her younger siblings.

[64] Marshall found respite in nature: There was scarcely a day, in New York, when he did not walk through Central Park; and he treasured the periods he could spend at Knollwood.

Feasting his eyes upon the hemlocks and the birches, often he felt as if his lost wife were at his side, and that made of Knollwood "one of the sacred places of the earth.

Marshall was in Zurich for the first gathering of the Extended Jewish Agency, an institution organized by him and Chaim Weizmann to enhance Zionist perspective and foster diaspora-Jewish identity.

[citation needed] True to the values and principles by which he led his life, in his last will and testament, he tithed ten percent of his personal net worth to the "Jewish Theological Seminary of America and to twelve other educational and charitable institutions".

"[69] Marshall, his wife, daughter Ruth, and son Bob are buried in the Salem Fields Cemetery, in Brooklyn, New York.

According to his son's biographer, in 1923 Louis Marshall was named the fourth "most outstanding Jew in the world" by a "Reader's poll by the Jewish Tribune ... None of the three men who topped him in the poll—Albert Einstein, Weizmann, and Israel Zangwill—were Americans".