Nathan Ross Margold

Nathan Ross Margold was born in Iași, Romania in 1899, to Wolf Margulies and Rosa Kahan. He was brought to the United States aged two. Growing up in Brooklyn, he graduated from City College of New York in 1919. Margold then attended Harvard Law School. He became the editor of the school's Law Review. He was a "protégé" of Felix Frankfurter, who interested him in working for social reforms and workers rights. Later, during the New Deal era, former students of Frankfurter who joined the U.S. Federal government (including Margold) were collectively referred to as "Happy Hotdogs" invoking a pun on their mentor's name. ==Career==

After earning his law degree, Margold returned to New York City in 1923 and set up a private practice. With John Collier, Margold wrote the solicitor's opinion, "Powers of Indian Tribes" which was issued October 25, 1934, and commented on the wording of the Indian Reorganization Act. According to Vine Deloria Jr. and Clifford M. Lytle, "Modern tribal sovereignty thus [began] with this opinion" because the opinion recognized that the sovereignty of Indian tribes was inherent, rather than being granted to them by the federal government. In 1940, Margold wrote the introduction to the Handbook of Federal Indian Law by Felix S. Cohen. Margold believed that Indian self-governance was "a revealing record in the development of our American constitutional democracy." Recognizing his loyalty and legal expertise, Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Margold as a judge on the Municipal Court for the District of Columbia in 1942 where he continued to serve until 1945. He was then moved to the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia and served there until his death in 1947. ==Death==

Margold died on December 17, 1947, in Washington, D.C. ==References==