Marshall Breger

Marshall Jordan Breger, 78, died on August 3, 2025, in Silver Spring, MD, surrounded by his beloved wife and daughters. A longtime law professor at Catholic University of America and former senior official in the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, his expertise ranged from administrative procedure to the legal status of Jerusalem.

Born in New York to Miles and Beatrice Breger, Marshall grew up in Rego Park, Queens. He graduated from University of Pennsylvania then studied at Oriel College, Oxford University, where he met his wife Jennifer by asking her for directions to the Oxford Jewish Society. He returned to the U.S. and graduated from Penn Law School in 1973.

After teaching at University of Texas-Austin and SUNY-Buffalo law schools, he moved to Washington, DC, in 1982 for a fellowship at the Heritage Foundation. A year later, Marshall joined the Reagan White House as special assistant to the president and liaison to the Jewish community. For six years he served as chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent federal agency charged with improving administrative processes. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush appointed him Solicitor of Labor, the chief lawyer of the Labor Department.

Marshall joined CUA law school in 1994, and for 30 years taught classes on administrative law, constitutional law, and legal issues in the Middle East peace process. He published books on independent federal agencies, Vatican-Israel relations, and holy sites in Israel-Palestine. Often described as larger than life, he was passionate about free speech, rule of law, and Muslim-Jewish dialogue.

After travelling to Iran in 2002, he spearheaded the "Abrahamic Dialogue," bringing together Iranian senior clerics and American religious scholars for regular meetings over 20 years. In 2010 and 2013, Marshall organized trips for U.S. and international imams to tour Auschwitz and Dachau, leading to statements condemning Holocaust denial as against Islamic values.

Never interested in slowing down, Marshall was preparing to teach a new class this fall on "antisemitism and the law." He is survived by wife Jennifer; daughters Sarah and Esther; son-in-law Aaron Malinoff; sister Lynne Tag; and grandchildren Maya, Lev, and Ira. Funeral services were held at Woodside Synagogue and interment was at Baron Hirsch Cemetery in Staten Island.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Center for Interreligious Understanding, Yad Sarah, or Berman Hebrew Academy. Services entrusted to Sagel Bloomfield Danzansky Goldberg Funeral Care.