Education
Marsha Siegel Berzon graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1966 and received her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley in 1973.
Marsha Siegel Berzon graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1966 and received her law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley in 1973.
While at law school, Berzon was a contributor to the California Law Review. She then clerked for Judge James R. Browning of the Ninth Circuit from 1973 to 1974. Berzon then clerked for Associate Justice William J. Brennan, Junior. of the United States. Supreme Court.
She was Justice Brennan"s first female law clerk.
Berzon had a unique Supreme Court litigation practice and litigated many of the landmark cases during that period. Berzon was also a lecturer at University of California Berkeley in 1992 and a practitioner-in-residence at Cornell Law School in 1994.
On January 27, 1998, Berzon was nominated by Bill Clinton to the Ninth Circuit for the seat vacated when John T. Noonan took senior status in late 1996. Clinton renominated Berzon on January 26, 1999.
Berzon was confirmed by the United States. Senate in a 64-34 vote on March 9, 2000 and received her commission on March 16, 2000.
In a 2009 decision, Judge Berzon wrote that while a San Francisco resolution condemning the Vatican is in line with current Establishment Clause jurisprudence, she was troubled by how close the resolution came to the establishment of an anti-Catholic stance. In October 2014, Judge Berzon joined an opinion that held same sex marriage bans in Idaho and Nevada violated the United States. Constitution. She wrote a concurring opinion concluding that the prohibitions were not only discrimination based upon sexual orientation, but a form of gender discrimination and therefore subject to heightened scrutiny.