On Tuesday, July 19, it was officially announced that the Honorable John McClellan Marshall, Senior District Judge, was elected to receive the Thirty-Third Degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. This degree is the highest degree of the Scottish Rite and is an honor that is granted to very few Masons. Judge Marshall, a third generation Scottish Rite Mason, lives in Dallas and has been a member of the Scottish Rite since 1978. The degree was conferred in Washington, D.C. in August with a celebration in Dallas on October 1st.
Judge Marshall served as District Judge of the Fourteenth Judicial District Court of Texas from 1981 through 2000. He is an Honorary Professor of Marie Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland, where each year since 1993 he has taught a course on American history and Constitutional Law, including a mock jury trial with attorneys from the United States. He has also taught as a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of Transylvania, Brasov, Romania; Nicholas Copernicus University, Torun, Poland; Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland; University of Lódz, Lódz, Poland; Wroclaw University, Wroclaw, Poland; Alexander Pushkin State University, Brest, Belarus; and the University of Riga, Latvia.
Judge Marshall is a Fellow of the College of the State Bar of Texas; a Life Fellow of the Texas Bar Foundation; a Charter and Life Fellow of the Dallas Bar Foundation; a member of Phi Delta Phi International Legal Fraternity; a Colonel in the Texas State Guard; and holds a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Judge Marshall received his B.A. from Virginia Military Institute in 1965 where he was class Valedictorian; he received his M.A. from Vanderbilt University in 1966; his J.D. from Southern Methodist University in 1975; and he was awarded an honorary LL.D. from the Academia Mexicana de Derecho Internacional in 1985.
