IN MEMORIAM

Adrian A. Kragen

Shannon Cecil Turner Professor of Law, Emeritus

UC Berkeley

1907–2005

Adrian A. Kragen, Shannon Cecil Turner Professor of Law, Emeritus, died peacefully in his sleep on March 25, 2005, at nearly 98 years of age. In addition to his many years as a distinguished member of the Boalt Hall faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, Professor Kragen was a former practitioner, vice chancellor of UC Berkeley, and deputy attorney general of California.

 

He was born in San Francisco on June 3, 1907. Restless as a young student, he abandoned high school early. Then, by age 21, already matured by managerial responsibilities, he returned to preparatory school where, in record time and with outstanding grades, he qualified to enter his school of choice, UC Berkeley.

 

The first in his family to attend college, Professor Kragen worked his way through college as a history major, became a member of Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude in 1931. By chance, one of his instructors was Roger J. Traynor (later chief justice of the California Supreme Court and Berkeley’s 1973 Alumnus of the Year), whose extraordinary mind and teaching skills inspired young Kragen’s interest in the law and particularly tax law. With the advice of his mentor, Kragen enrolled in UC Hastings College of the Law to be near his work sites in San Francisco, but transferred to Boalt Hall at the end of his first year. He earned his law degree from Boalt in 1934, a member of both the Order of the Coif and the California Law Review.

 

Following graduation and several years in private practice, he became a deputy attorney general of California from 1940 to 1944, heading the tax department under then-Attorney General Earl Warren—Berkeley’s 1945 Alumnus of the Year, later governor of California and eventually chief justice of the United States. The two men remained in lifelong contact. However, when the attorney general’s departmental heads were moved from San Francisco to Sacramento in 1944, Professor Kragen left for Los Angeles and joined the prestigious law firm of Loeb & Loeb. Despite the usual five years to partnership, in 11 months he was promoted to partner and soon thereafter to managing partner. In his years at the firm, 1944 to 1952, he represented major studios, as well as numerous luminaries in the motion picture industry, and argued their cases before the United States Supreme Court.

 

In 1952, Professor Kragen accepted the invitation of Dean William L. Prosser and the Boalt faculty to leave law practice and join them at UC Berkeley (at a salary merely one-fourth of his prior year’s earnings, albeit with tenure and the understanding that his would be the highest professorial salary paid anyone at Boalt). He immediately became a classroom favorite in such intensely complex subjects as antitrust law, copyright law, and federal taxation. A pioneer of the “problem-method” of teaching, he incorporated this approach in his coauthored “casebooks” on the income taxation of individuals, trusts and estates, and business entities, which were published in four editions from 1970 to 1985. He also introduced a course entitled Taxation of International Transactions, as well as a highly successful seminar on taxation of business enterprises in which leading practitioners participated. His intellectual and personal vigor inspired generations of law students. His experience in law practice, and the “world,” gave him rich sources for illustrating real-life tax law in the classroom and office. According to former students, he made the classes “come alive.”

 

In addition, Professor Kragen was a forceful, sensible, and central figure in law faculty meetings, debates and decisions, and in the lives of the institution and its students and alumni. He greatly nurtured a “family feeling” among the law faculty, regularly organizing group excursions to restaurants, football games at Memorial Stadium, and the annual faculty wine picnic. He kept in touch with alumni by speaking to their clubs, attending the Lair of the Bear (a family camp for faculty and alumni), belonging to the Bear Backers Council, and serving as Boalt’s representative to the board of the California Alumni Association. To current and prospective students, he was a dedicated volunteer-advisor, often encouraging Cal athletes to pursue further studies at Boalt or other graduate departments.

 

During the challenging and tumultuous years of 1960 to 1964, Professor Kragen was tapped to serve as vice chancellor at UC Berkeley. Although skillful in that role, he opted to leave the administration after only four years in order to return to his true love: teaching.

 

In addition to his duties at UC Berkeley, Kragen taught as a visiting professor at the University of Texas in 1967, and was consultant and advisor to various governmental and private groups throughout his academic career. He logged decades of extracurricular service as general counsel to the California Retailers Association, from his days in practice until he resigned late in life, from which position he drafted and lobbied for legislation of vital interest to consumers and employees. He was an active member of the International Fiscal Association (IFA) and the American Law Institute.

 

Professor Kragen became emeritus in 1973, in an era of mandatory retirement. He continued teaching, however, at the elite “Over-65 Club” at UC Hastings College of the Law, from 1974 to 1980, eventually returning to Boalt’s classrooms until 1994. During his “retirement,” he also served as “of counsel” to Steinhart, Goldberg, Feigenbaum & Ladar (1972-75); as a board member of Alta Bates Hospital; on the Academic Senate’s Committee on University Welfare and Committee on University-Emeriti Relations; and on the Boalt Hall Capital Campaign Committee. His ongoing involvement in University-emeriti relations culminated in the establishment of the UC Berkeley Emeriti Association, the headquarters of which, appropriately, is located in the Adrian A. Kragen Room in Boalt Hall.

 

Professor Kragen married his beloved wife (Velvyl) Billie Bercovich, an accomplished violinist, in the year that she graduated from Berkeley, Class of ‘33, and their marriage remained a model of devoted unity and happiness until her untimely death in 1987. They shared an incomparable enthusiasm for Cal’s sports programs, both men’s and women’s, and were generous benefactors to both. Their loyalty to UC Berkeley carried over to their family. Both their children, Kenneth A. Kragen and Robin S. Merritt, graduated from UC Berkeley, as did three of their five grandchildren. Tradition further endured as their oldest great-grandchild was named Cal, while the fourth was born June 3, 2005, on what would have been Professor Kragen’s 98th birthday. An understandably proud patriarch, he continually spoke with love and gratitude for each family member.

 

In turn, students, colleagues, family and friends revered him and many demonstrated this by contributing in his honor to the Adrian A. Kragen Chair in Law. Boalt itself conferred on him its highest honor—the Boalt Hall Alumni Association’s Citation Award of 1972. In 1973, UC Berkeley awarded him the Berkeley Citation. Later, in 1998, he won the prestigious designation as the California Alumni Association’s Alumnus of the Year, an honor also bestowed on his son in 1986, making them only the second such father-son duo, after the Haas family.

 

Professor Kragen was regarded as a cherished colleague, a gifted teacher, enthusiastic golfer, engaging conversationalist, loyal friend, and a person of extraordinary integrity, common sense, and authenticity. One could always be confident that he told one what he thought. He was completely sincere when he said, often, “I’ve had a wonderful life.” He will be long remembered by those lucky enough to have known him.

 

At the memorial service at Boalt on April 8, 2005, the affectionate tributes opened with a trumpeter’s rendition of the Cal fight song. Later, in a fitting farewell, the gathering of family, colleagues and friends joined in a rousing cheer for “Adrian” and then stood to sing “Hail to California.”

 

Jesse H. Choper

Babette B. Barton

Louise A. Epstein

John K. McNulty