U.S. District Judge Mark Kravitz dies

HARTFORD, Conn. -- U.S. District Judge Mark Kravitz, a prominent New Haven appellate lawyer who ascended to the federal bench in 2003 and oversaw a variety of high-profile cases in Connecticut, has died of Lou Gehrig's disease. He was 62.

Kravitz died Sept. 30 at his home in Guilford, where he continued to work on cases over the past month as the disease progressed rapidly, fellow federal Judge Alvin Thompson said.

"Judge Kravitz was a wonderful colleague and a very dedicated and able jurist," Thompson said. "I think it was his intellect, his temperament and the fact that he enjoyed every aspect of the work."

Born in Philadelphia, Kravitz graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., and the Georgetown University Law Center. He served as a law clerk for then-Supreme Court Justice William Rehn-quist, later to became chief justice, before beginning a 27-year career at the Wiggin & Dana law firm in New Haven.

As an appellate lawyer, Kravitz argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and other appellate courts across the country.

Shortly after being nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush, Kravitz won an award from the Connecticut Council on Freedom of Information. The council honored Kravitz for arguing for free speech and freedom of information, often without pay.

Kravitz oversaw diverse criminal and civil cases in the New Haven courthouse. He also helped review and change federal court rules for most of the past decade. In 2007, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appointed Kravitz as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Civil Rules.

This year, Kravitz sentenced philanthropist Anne Bass' butler to 20 years in prison in August for trying to extort money from her. In April, he ruled that New Haven officials could remove Occupy New Haven protesters from the city green, in a case involving property rights versus free-speech rights.

In 2009, Kravitz ruled that Burlington school officials acted within their rights in disciplining student Avery Doninger for an Internet posting she wrote off school grounds. "Off-campus speech can become on-campus speech with the click of a mouse," he wrote.

Kravitz was the second federal judge in Connecticut to die this year. Judge Peter Dorsey died in January.