The late Judge Ian H. Levin was appointed as a United States magistrate judge for the Northern District of Illinois on May 27, 1997, after serving as a Cook County Circuit Court judge from 1989 to 1997.
Judge Levin was born on July 4, 1939, and grew up in the Chicago neighborhood of East Rogers Park. His grandparents were Romanian immigrants. Judge Levin’s father, Louis, was a postal worker, and his mother, Sylvia, was a homemaker. He attended Sullivan High School, played on the basketball team, and was a varsity starter his senior year. Judge Levin also played baseball and was the captain of his high school baseball team. After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in accounting in 1961 from DePaul University, Judge Levin became a certified public accountant that same year. In 1966, he graduated cum laude from DePaul University College of Law with a Juris Doctor and was the valedictorian of his graduating law class. He went on to become the first law clerk to the late Illinois Supreme Court Justice Daniel P. Ward (from 1966 to 1969).
Following his clerkship, he joined the Cook County public defender’s office as a felony trial attorney. From 1972 to 1973, he served as chief of the Appeals Division for the public defender’s office. He then joined Foran, Wiss & Schultz (later known as Foran & Schultz), where his practice focused primarily on constitutional, commercial, condemnation, and civil matters. In 1978, Judge Levin moved to Karon, Morrison & Savikas Ltd., where he specialized in defending certified public accountants charged with malpractice. He was appointed as special counsel to the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners in 1987.
Judge Levin received a number of prestigious awards during his career. In November of 1999, he received an award for “Outstanding Achievement in the Judiciary” from the Illinois Association of Attorney Certified Public Accountants. On May 8, 2001, he was awarded the DePaul College of Law Alumni Service Award for “Outstanding Service to the Judiciary.” In 2004 and 2005, Judge Levin received additional awards for exemplary and outstanding judicial service. He was also honored for his judicial work and many outstanding achievements when Sullivan High School inducted him into its Prominent Alumni program.
After Judge Levin retired from the federal bench in 2006, he chose to practice law and focused on helping people who had been victims of human rights abuses. At attorney Elliot Samuel’s request, Judge Levin joined a team of lawyers pursuing reparations for Holocaust victims and their heirs. In one federal lawsuit, they alleged that the national bank and a private bank colluded with Nazi officials to steal the assets of Hungarian Jews. A second lawsuit alleged that the Hungarian State Railways stole the belongings of Jews transported to Auschwitz and other death camps in 1944.
Judge Levin’s work led to an invitation from the lead attorney, Robert Pavich, in the cases to join his Chicago law firm, Pavich Law Group P.C., as of counsel. Judge Levin and Pavich worked on other international human rights law cases, including one suit accusing private American military contractors of aiding in the genocide of Serbs in Croatia and another suit accusing India’s government of oppressing Sikhs. They also filed two amicus briefs with the United States Supreme Court in
Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.,
urging the Court to allow victims of genocide or other high crimes against humanity that were committed abroad to seek redress in American courts under the Alien Tort Statute.