Leon M. Gabinet died on December 6. He was 94.
The below is excerpted from the Case Western Reserve University School of Law In Memoriam, where Gabinet was a professor for over fifty years.
At an early age, Gabinet moved with his family to the United States from Poland. During World War II, Gabinet enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 17, where he served as a fire controlman on the USS Flint. The ship was hit by a kamikaze aircraft off Okinawa and heavily damaged, with significant casualties. Gabinet heroically survived hours in the fiery water, being strafed by Japanese aircraft.
Following the war, Gabinet attended the University of Chicago on the GI Bill. After graduating in 1950, Gabinet went on to attend the University of Chicago’s medical school for two years. Then, despite being first in his med school class, Gabinet transferred to the University of Chicago’s School of Law, where he served as editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and graduated with honors in 1953.
Gabinet was a law clerk for the Oregon Supreme Court, then worked at the Oregon Tax Commission, and later practiced law at a Portland law firm. From 1968 until 2021, he taught tax law at Case Western Reserve University School of Law. In 2019, he was featured in an ABC News 5 Cleveland story as possibly the nation’s oldest teaching law professor. He was elected to the Institute in 1978.