William Stoughton (judge)

Lore & Background

He was a major landowner, partnering with Joseph Dudley in land purchases, including acquisitions from the Nipmuc tribe in what is now Worcester County and a venture to acquire 1 million acres in the Merrimack River valley.

Reader's Guide

William Stoughton's significance lies in his central role in the Salem Witch Trials, where as chief justice he accepted spectral evidence—testimony based on supposed demonic visions—leading to numerous convictions. Unlike Samuel Sewall, who later expressed regret, Stoughton never admitted error. His actions reflected a broader effort to reassert Puritan authority. His legacy is tied to the trials' notoriety and the enduring debate over judicial overreach and the use of questionable evidence.

Did You Know?

• Stoughton ordered the execution of suspected witches, but Governor Phips reprieved those convicted and eventually pardoned them, including those exempted by pregnancy.
• The town of Stoughton, Massachusetts, was named after him.

Roots in Resistance: South Africa and the Fight for Justice

Born in Newcastle, South Africa, in September 1944 and raised in the Anglican faith, Margaret Hilary Marshall's formative years were shaped by the moral urgency of apartheid-era politics. At the University of the Witwatersrand, she became deeply involved in student activism and the broader struggle against minority rule. By 1967 she had risen to the presidency of the National Union of South African Students, an organization committed to dismantling oppressive governance and securing equality for all South Africans. Marshall later reflected that justice in that era was largely inaccessible to Black citizens, noting that the death penalty was applied in wildly disproportionate numbers and that many criminal statutes targeted only Black South Africans. In 1966, while serving as NUSAS vice president, she welcomed U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy to South Africa, stepping in for union president Ian Robertson, who had been barred from public appearances. Fleeing political persecution, she emigrated to the United States, eventually earning a master's degree in education from Harvard in 1969 and a law degree from Yale in 1976 before becoming a U.S. citizen in 1978.

From Private Practice to the Highest Bench

Marshall's legal career in the United States unfolded across a series of prominent positions that steadily elevated her profile in Boston's legal community. After earning her Yale law degree, she spent thirteen years at the firm Csaplar & Bok, progressing from associate to partner. She then joined Choate, Hall & Stewart as a partner, and in 1991–1992 she served as president of the Boston Bar Association, the oldest such organization in the country. From 1992 to 1996 she held the role of general counsel at Harvard University, a position that placed her at the intersection of law and academia. In 1996, Republican governor William F. Weld appointed her as an associate justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, the Western Hemisphere's oldest appellate court. Three years later, in September 1999, Republican governor Paul Cellucci elevated her to chief justice, with her term commencing on October 14. As the twenty-fourth person to hold that office, Marshall became the first woman to lead the court in its more than three-century history, and only the second woman ever to sit on its bench.

Goodridge, Retirement, and Personal Sacrifice

During her tenure as chief justice, Marshall authored more than two hundred opinions, but none carried a broader cultural resonance than Goodridge v. Department of Public Health. In that landmark ruling, she held that the Massachusetts constitution forbade the state from withholding the right to same-sex marriage from its citizens, a decision that would ripple across the nation and reshape the legal landscape for LGBTQ families. The opinion stands as one of the most consequential state-level rulings of the early twenty-first century. Her time on the bench came to a close on July 21, 2010, when she announced her retirement, effective at the end of October. Marshall explained that her decision was driven by a personal need: her husband, New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, whom she had married in 1984, was battling Parkinson's disease, and she wanted to be present for him in his final years. Lewis passed away in 2013. After leaving the court, Marshall returned to private practice at Choate, Hall & Stewart, the firm where she had previously served as a partner.

Recognition and Continued Influence

Even after leaving the bench, Marshall remained a prominent figure in American legal and academic life. She served as senior fellow of the Yale Corporation, the governing body of Yale University, a role she held until stepping down from the board in 2016; she was the first woman to occupy that senior position and had previously served as a corporation fellow from 2004 to 2010. She also maintained a seat on the Council of the American Law Institute and continued as senior counsel at Choate, Hall & Stewart. In 2017 she was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society, a recognition of her broader contributions to public life. The Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School awarded her the 2021 Bolch Prize for the Rule of Law, honoring her sustained commitment to legal integrity. That same year, on May 27, Harvard University conferred upon her an honorary Doctorate of Laws, and in May 2022 the University of Pennsylvania followed with a similar honorary degree. These honors collectively underscore a career that extended well beyond the courtroom into the institutions that shape American law and governance.

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