Craig Waters
Gerald Kogan was an innovator in his time as Florida’s top judge. His death this past Thursday gives us a time to take stock of his amazing legacy as the former head of Florida’s judicial system.
As chief justice from 1996 to 1998, Kogan launched Florida s pioneering Access Initiative. It was the most important of several big changes he made.
Premised on a belief that everyone should have access to courts, Kogan s initiative was praised as one of the most creative uses of cutting-edge technology in any American state in the 1990s. Many of its elements later became standard practice, though they were new and daring at the time.