Albert Martin Kales

Born in Chicago on March 11, 1875, Albert Martin Kales became an American lawyer, teacher, and legal scholar whose work centered on property law and public institutions. He studied at Harvard Law School, was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1899, and spent most of his academic career at Northwestern University School of Law, with one year teaching at Harvard.

Kales wrote both for specialists and for general readers. Alongside major works on real property and future interests, he published Unpopular Government in the United States in 1914, a book that looked closely at the gaps between democratic ideals and the way government actually operated. He was also known for advocating reforms in judicial selection, and later generations connected his ideas to the merit-based approach often called the Missouri Plan.

He died on July 26, 1922. Although he is best remembered in legal history, his writing still stands out for trying to make difficult questions about law, power, and fairness understandable and urgent.