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.