Robert E. Keeton, 88; insurance law scholar and District Court judge

Robert E. Keeton, 88, leading scholar on insurance law and emeritus professor at Harvard University who also served as a District Court judge, died July 2 in Cambridge, Mass., according to a statement from the school.

Among his most important contributions to insurance law was a study he worked on with University of Virginia professor Jeffrey O’Connell in the early 1970s on the automobile insurance system. That study led to the passage of Massachusetts’ no-fault auto insurance law.

A native of Clarksville, Texas, Keeton earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from the University of Texas. He practiced law in Houston before serving in the Navy on the escort carrier Liscome Bay in the Pacific during World War II. He received a Purple Heart after the carrier was sunk by a Japanese torpedo.

He returned to private practice after the war and began teaching at Southern Methodist University in 1951. He joined the faculty at Harvard two years later and remained there until 1979 when President Carter appointed him to the federal bench.

As a judge, he presided over several high-profile cases, including the 1989 conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion trial of presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche Jr. that ended in a mistrial.

Keeton retired in 2006 as the oldest member of the federal judiciary in Massachusetts.