Emeritus Professor Richard Marcus Honored by Peers, Colleagues and Former Students  

A photo of Professor Richard Marcus speaking at the UC Law SF event held in his honor.

Professor Richard Marcus at a UC Law SF event honoring his decades of contributions to the law and the school.

 

  • Professor Richard Marcus was honored by peers and colleagues after 38 years at UC Law SF. 
  • Marcus is an influential writer, scholar and educator in civil procedure and other litigation topics. 
  • A new special edition of the UC Law Journal is dedicated to his impact.  

 

Storied civil procedure scholar and legal educator Richard Marcus was honored with a March 30 campus celebration and a special issue of the UC Law Journal dedicated to his impact as he heads into emeritus status at UC Law SF. 

Federal judges, accomplished former students, and fellow civil procedure experts contributed articles to the journal and spoke at the event in the Deb Colloquium Room. 

Chancellor & Dean David Faigman said Marcus is “a commanding presence in the courtroom, a highly accomplished scholar, and is deeply respected by his colleagues.” 

A graduate of Pomona College and UC Berkeley School of Law (then named Boalt Hall), Marcus became a law professor in 1981 and joined the faculty at UC Law SF in 1988. He was named a distinguished professor in 1997.

Marcus has played a principal role in drafting amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on topics including discovery, class actions, and multidistrict litigation. He is a lead author of the West casebooks Civil Procedure: A Modern Approach (8th ed. 2024) and Complex Litigation (7th ed. 2021), four volumes of the Federal Practice & Procedure treatises and dozens of law review articles. 

Cooley LLP partner Simona Agnolucci ’06, a member of the UC Law SF Board of Directors and a former student of Marcus, noted his “almost spiritual relationship to the rules,” as well as his thoughtful advocacy on behalf of his students even after they left the law school. 

“Many of us owe our careers to Professor Marcus’ efforts outside the classroom,” she said.  

Other speakers included Lee H. Rosenthal, a senior judge for the Southern District of Texas; Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann and Bernstein founding partner Elizabeth Cabraser; UC Berkeley Law Professor Andrew Bradt; Stanford Law Professor Diego Zambrano and Edward H. Cooper, professor emeritus at the University of Michigan Law School. 

Several speakers touched on Marcus’ legendary thrift when it comes to his wardrobe, and Marcus acknowledged that the coat he was wearing during the festivities was a high school graduation gift from his parents 61 years ago. 

Marcus was also chided for his shoeless journeys through the law school halls and his abiding commitment to the word processing system WordPerfect, whose popularity waned decades ago. Marcus’ “encyclopedic awareness of the procedural universe” makes him a rare problem-solver in the field, Zambrano said. “Where other scholars take sides, he tries to map the terrain, and does it all in a font from 1887.” 

Marcus plans to continue with his scholarship and work on the federal rules, as well as teaching at UC Law SF on a call-back basis.