Celebrating Marsha Levick

After an exemplary career as Juvenile Law Center’s co-founder and Chief Legal Officer, Marsha Levick steps down from the organization this month. Marsha’s leadership in the fight for youth justice has been extraordinary, and we are excited to see her fight continue into her next chapter. 

In her final year at Temple Law School, Marsha Levick co-founded Juvenile Law Center with three classmates. Over the course of the last five decades, Marsha has shaped our legal strategy, overseeing the litigation docket. She successfully litigated challenges to unconstitutional and harmful laws, policies and practices on behalf of children in both the justice and child welfare systems. Marsha served as co-lead counsel in the federal and state litigation arising out of Pennsylvania’s notorious “Kids for Cash” scandal, which had repercussions across Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system and reverberated around the world.  
 

Marsha at the 2025 Temple Symposium.

She played a central role in the many U.S. Supreme Court cases banning extreme sentences for children involved in our criminal justice system, including eliminating the death penalty and mandatory life without parole sentences for children. Marsha was co-counsel in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the U.S. Supreme Court case that led to over 1000 children formerly sentenced to life without parole to come home. Marsha has been a leader and mentor to countless law students and attorneys at Juvenile Law Center and at the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University law schools where she has been an adjunct professor for 15 years.

In addition to receiving the highly prestigious Philadelphia Award in 2015, Marsha has also been honored by the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and American Bar Associations, was named a co-Citizen of the Year by The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2009, was the inaugural winner of The Legal Intelligencer’s Arlen Spector Award in 2013 and  was named the Philadelphia Citizen’s A. Leon Higginbothom Social Justice Champion. At our 50th anniversary celebration last Spring, we also presented Marsha with Juvenile Law Center’s Leadership Prize.   

While we know Marsha will continue to create change in the next phase of her career, we will miss her tremendous insight and brilliance at Juvenile Law Center. And we will be forever indebted to her for her vision and leadership.