{{short description|American judge}} {{Infobox person | name = Nathan Ross Margold | image = | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = 1899 | birth_place = Iași, Romania | death_date = {{Death date and age|December 17, 1947|1899}} | death_place = Washington, D.C., U.S. | death_cause = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | other_names = | known_for = | education = City College of New York (BA)<br/>Harvard University (LLB) | employer = | occupation = Lawyer | title = | term = | predecessor = | successor = | party = | boards = | spouse = | children = | parents = | relatives = }}
'''Nathan Ross Margold''' (1899 – December 17, 1947) was a Romanian-born American lawyer. He was a municipal judge in Washington, D.C., and the author of the 1933 Margold Report to promote civil rights for African-Americans through the courts. He was also a supporter of Native American civil rights and Native American sovereignty. In addition to his legal career, Margold is remembered as the father of adult film pioneer William Margold.
==Early life== Nathan Ross Margold was born in Iași, Romania in 1899, to Wolf Margulies and Rosa Kahan. He was brought to the United States aged two. Growing up in Brooklyn, he graduated from City College of New York in 1919.<ref name=ambio>{{cite book|title=American National Biography|year=2010|publisher=Oxford University Press / American National Biography|author=Strum, Philippa|chapter=Nathan Ross Margold}}</ref> Margold then attended Harvard Law School.<ref name="nytimesthecourtspoeticjustice">{{cite news|last1=Williams|first1=Juan|title=THE COURTS; Poetic Justice|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/18/education/the-courts-poetic-justice.html|accessdate=January 1, 2018|work=The New York Times|date=January 18, 2004}}</ref> He became the editor of the school's Law Review.<ref name=FDR>{{cite book|title=The FDR Years|author=William D. Pederson|year=2009|page=172|publisher=Facts On File, Inc}}</ref> He was a "protégé" of Felix Frankfurter,<ref name="ricedemocracy59"/><ref name="buildingnewdealliberalism61">{{cite book|last1=Smith|first1=Jason Scott|title=Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, 1933-1956|date=2006|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge, U.K.|isbn=9780521139939|oclc=761547167|page=61}}</ref> who interested him in working for social reforms and workers rights.<ref name=FDR/> Later, during the New Deal era, former students of Frankfurter who joined the U.S. Federal government (including Margold) were collectively referred to as "Happy Hotdogs" invoking a pun on their mentor's name.<ref name=FDR/>
==Career== After earning his law degree, Margold returned to New York City in 1923 and set up a private practice.<ref name=FDR/> From 1925 to 1927 Margold served as the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.<ref name=FDR/> In 1927 Margold married Gertrude Weiner (the couple would go on to have a son).<ref name=FDR/>
Also in 1927, Felix Frankfurter persuaded Margold to return to his alma mater, the Harvard Law School, and teach Criminal Law.<ref name="fresnobeeobit">{{cite news|title=Judge Margold Dies|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/25960740/?terms=%22nathan%2Br.%2Bmargold%22|accessdate=January 1, 2018|work=The Fresno Bee|date=December 16, 1947|page=14|via=Newspapers.com|url-access=registration |location=Fresno, California}}</ref><ref name=FDR/> Harvard president A. Laurence Lowell opposed Margold, as he did not want another Jewish reformer on the faculty. Lowell's opposition was countered by law school dean Roscoe Pound who was a supporter of Frankfurter. Pound was forced to back down to Lowell after almost two years of pressure, and Margold lost his job.<ref name=FDR/> Margold returned to his private practice in New York City in 1928.<ref name=FDR/>
From 1928 to 1929 Margold served as a special counsel for the New York Transit Commission.<ref name=FDR/> In 1930 he served as a legal adviser on Indian affairs for the Institute for Government Research.<ref name=FDR/> During this time Margold also wrote many articles for law journals and coedited ''Cases on Criminal Law''.<ref name=FDR/>
Due to Frankfurter's recommendation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) recruited Margold as a special counsel beginning from 1930 through 1933.<ref name=FDR/> In 1931, Margold wrote a book-length strategy (often referred to as the Margold Report), presenting an outline to desegregate public schools in the south. The NAACP adapted many of its ideas to advance civil rights for African-Americans through the courts, culminating in 1954's ''Brown v. Board of Education''.<ref name="nytimesthecourtspoeticjustice"/><ref name="ricedemocracy59">{{cite book|last1=Rice|first1=Condoleezza|author-link=Condoleezza Rice|title=Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom|date=2017|publisher=Grand Central Publishing|location=New York|isbn=9781455540181|page=59}}</ref><ref name=FDR/>
Margold received recommendations from Frankfurter and Justice Louis Brandeis and was hired as the solicitor for the United States Department of the Interior. He served in this department from 1933 to 1942,<ref name="fresnobeeobit"/> including acting as an aide to Interior Secretary Harold L. Ickes.<ref name="newsjournalobit">{{cite news|title=Other Deaths|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/161879909/?terms=%22nathan%2Bross%2Bmargold%22|accessdate=January 1, 2018|work=The News Journal|date=December 17, 1947|location=Wilmington, Delaware|page=33|via=Newspapers.com|url-access=registration }}</ref><ref name=FDR/> Ickes named him as chairman of the Petroleum Administrative Board after the National Recovery Administration codified the industry.<ref name=FDR/> He was then appointed chairman of the Petroleum Labor Policy Board to administer that code, and served in that position from 1933 to 1935.<ref name=FDR/> The position was dissolved when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that parts of the ''National Industrial Recovery Act'', which had delegated petroleum code-making authority to the Executive branch, were unconstitutional in ''Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan''.<ref name=FDR/> From 1933 to 1935 Margold also acted as a special assistant attorney general.<ref name=FDR2>{{cite book|title=The FDR Years|author=William D. Pederson|year=2009|page=173|publisher=Facts On File, Inc}}</ref> With John Collier, Margold wrote the solicitor's opinion, "Powers of Indian Tribes" which was issued October 25, 1934, and commented on the wording of the Indian Reorganization Act. According to Vine Deloria Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, "Modern tribal sovereignty thus [began] with this opinion" because the opinion recognized that the sovereignty of Indian tribes was inherent, rather than being granted to them by the federal government.<ref name=DeloriaLytle>{{cite book|title=The Nations within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty|author=Vine Deloria and Clifford M. Lytle|year=1984|page=160|publisher=Pantheon Books}}</ref>
In 1940, Margold wrote the introduction to the ''Handbook of Federal Indian Law'' by Felix S. Cohen.<ref name="independentrecordindiansentitled">{{cite news|title=Indians Entitled To All Rights of U.S. Citizenship|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/11546764/?terms=%22nathan%2Br.%2Bmargold%22|accessdate=January 1, 2018|work=The Independent Record|date=August 10, 1940|page=5|via=Newspapers.com|url-access=registration |location=Helena, Montana}}</ref> Margold believed that Indian self-governance was "a revealing record in the development of our American constitutional democracy."<ref name="independentrecordindiansentitled"/>
Margold was a member of the Modern Forum of the League for Peace and Democracy, an organization named as a "Communist front organization" by witnesses during a hearing of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1938.<ref name="democratandchronicleruleloyalist">{{cite news|title=War Reporter Bares Slaying of Americans. Communists Rule Loyalist Roost, Inquiry Told|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/135840698/?terms=%22nathan%2Br.%2Bmargold%22|accessdate=January 1, 2018|work=Democrat and Chronicle|location=Rochester, New York|date=November 23, 1938|page=3|via=Newspapers.com|url-access=registration }}</ref>
Recognizing his loyalty and legal expertise, Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Margold as a judge on the Municipal Court for the District of Columbia in 1942 where he continued to serve until 1945.<ref name="fresnobeeobit"/><ref name="newsjournalobit"/><ref name=FDR2/> He was then moved to the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia and served there until his death in 1947.<ref name=FDR2/>
==Death== Margold died on December 17, 1947, in Washington, D.C.<ref name="newsjournalobit"/><ref name="latimesobit">{{cite news|title=Jurist Dies|url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/159771686/?terms=%22nathan%2Br.%2Bmargold%22|accessdate=January 1, 2018|work=The Los Angeles Times|page=12|via=Newspapers.com|url-access=registration }}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Margold, Nathan Ross}} Category:1899 births Category:1947 deaths Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:Romanian emigrants to the United States Category:City College of New York alumni Category:Harvard Law School alumni Category:Municipal judges in the United States Category:20th-century American judges Category:District of Columbia judges Category:20th-century American lawyers Category:Activists for African-American civil rights Category:Activists for Native American rights Category:American Indigenous rights activists Category:20th-century American Jews