David Marchese ’25 was straddling a narrow chokepoint of the Rio Grande River in Big Bend National Park when he missed the call from Harvard Law School letting him know he had been admitted from the wait list.
When Marchese returned to his car and heard the voicemail from Assistant Dean for Admissions Kristi Jobson ’12, he started to cry. He had planned to start at another law school in the fall of 2022, but he accepted Jobson’s offer without hesitation. (Because it was after 5 p.m. in Cambridge, however, he politely waited — on pins and needles — to return her call the following day.).
“I had a mentor who said, ‘When Harvard comes knocking, you answer,’” he laughed. The call “was completely life-changing.”
Marchese, who grew up mostly in McAllen, Texas, came to Harvard Law with a goal of working in civil rights law, but through his coursework and prominent internships — including at the U.S. Department of Defense — he found he had a passion for national security law too. He initially planned to serve in the U.S. Navy or U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps or as an attorney in a defense-related agency for the federal government. But those plans were derailed by a federal hiring freeze, among other unforeseen circumstances. Now he’s pursuing plaintiff-side work in his native Texas.
“The through-line is wanting to do public service,” he said.
Marchese was born in Italy to an Italian father and a Mexican American mother. His father served in the Italian Navy and as a commercial airline pilot. When Marchese was 6, his parents separated, and Marchese and his mom returned to her hometown of McAllen where she was an elementary school librarian. Growing up in the Rio Grande Valley, the southernmost part of Texas, was formative, Marchese said.
“It’s one of the most disadvantaged places in the country,” he said. “People always seem to forget — If you go to San Antonio and drive four hours south, there’s still civilization there.”
At Baylor University, Marchese studied history and secured significant internships, including with a public defender’s office in Kentucky where he worked with people on death row — many of whom could not read or write — informing them about their cases. He also spent part of a semester in Washington, D.C., at the U.S. Department of Justice.
The part of Kentucky he worked in, he says, was mostly white, compared with his hometown, which was predominantly Hispanic. But he realized that the challenges people faced were similar.
“There were systemic issues working against people” in both places, he said. “That was really eye-opening to me.”
After graduating from Baylor in 2019, Marchese was a substitute teacher at a middle school in Austin, Texas, and then spent a year at a public school in nearby Manor, Texas, as an AmeriCorps member. There, he helped implement a truancy prevention program, secured funding for a food pantry on campus, and developed a literacy program for English as a Second Language students.
After his first year at Harvard Law, Marchese spent the summer working at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund in San Antonio on education and employment discrimination cases.
His second year proved especially influential. He worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts as a student in the Government Lawyer: United States Attorney Clinic, and participated in the Program on International Law and Armed Conflict. In that program, among other assignments, he researched and co-authored a memo on military activities in outer space. The experience was satisfying, he said, in part because the field is relatively uncharted.
“You’re able to put your own spin on things. You end up having normative judgments: ‘This is what the law ought to be.’”
“My mom always says, ‘Remember, you could be blessed to be a blessing.’ And being able to use my Harvard Law School experience to help [veterans] … was phenomenal.”
The next summer, in part based on that experience, Marchese authored a memo on the Outer Space Treaty, nongovernmental entities, and the use of force while he was a summer honors intern at the U.S. Department of Defense Office of the General Counsel. He also researched law-of-war issues and policy guidance for humanitarian assistance activities.
Marchese had always considered a career in the military — in addition to his father’s Italian service, his maternal grandfather and great uncles were U.S. veterans — and being at the Department of Defense “really solidified” that interest.
“Being able to walk into the Pentagon every day was a surreal experience,” he said, noting that he regularly passed an exhibit honoring his grandfather’s hero, Gen. Douglas MacArthur. “It was eye opening and humbling — I’m just a kid from the border. The fact that I could go from there to the most important and biggest office building in the world where people are working toward a common goal of, hopefully, the peace and prosperity of the United States and globally — it’s awesome.”
Marchese also worked with service members as a student in the Veterans Law and Disability Benefits Clinic, where he helped a septuagenarian veteran prepare an estate plan.
“That was one of my most favorite experiences in law school,” he said. “My mom always says, ‘Remember, you could be blessed to be a blessing.’ And being able to use my Harvard Law School experience — my soon-to-be degree — to help individuals in that capacity was phenomenal.”
Marchese says he is thankful for the opportunity to study at Harvard Law School and for the friendships he has formed with faculty and peers.
“The people who have helped me get to this point, the people I’ve been with for the last three years, I’m grateful to have met them,” he said. “I’ve encountered some phenomenally brilliant people.”
He says the support of faculty and staff has been invaluable, including advice he received early on from his section leader, Jon D. Hanson, Alan A. Stone Professor of Law and director of the Systemic Justice Project.
“He really pushed me to see that, even though a lot of people end up going to ‘big law,’ it’s OK to follow your passion and goals and dreams and pursue the public interest route. Even though I don’t know quite exactly what I’m going to be doing, at the end of the day, I’m going to be able to use the vehicle of the law to help people. That’s my goal.”
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