Professor Krause received his B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1954 and his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1958. He is admitted to the bars of Michigan (1959), the District of Columbia (1959), Illinois (1963), and the United States Supreme Court (1963). He served with the U.S. Army from 1954-56 and practiced tax law with Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. from 1958-60 and international business law with Ford International in Dearborn, Michigan from 1960-63.
Professor Krause joined the Illinois faculty in 1963, and served as Alumni Distinguished Professor of Law from 1982-89 and as Max L. Rowe Professor of Law from 1989 until 1994. He took emeritus status in 1994 and continues teaching at Illinois in the fall semesters. He was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Bonn from 1976-77, a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford University (1984), a visiting professor at the University of Michigan (1981), the University of Miami (1987), and the Culverhouse Professor at Stetson University (1991). In 1992, he received the von Humboldt Foundation Research prize, and was reinvited in 2004-2005. He was a Guggenheim Fellow (1969-70), an associate at the University of Illinois Center for Advanced Study (1970, 1979), a German Marshall Fund U.S. Fellow (1977-78), a Hewlett fellow in Australia (1984), and a German Academic Exchange Service Fellow (1985).
He served as U.S. Delegate to the Hague Conference on Private International Law concerning the Treaty on International Adoptions (1990-93), as Illinois Commissioner on Uniform State Laws (1991-97), and as Reporter to the Uniform Parentage Act (1969-73), the Uniform Law Commissioners' Adoption Committee (1979-84), and the Uniform Putative Fathers Act (1985).
For the International Encyclopedia on Comparative Law, he reported on "Kinship Relations." He is a member of the Académie Internationale de Droit Comparé, and served as rapporteur on U.S. law at the Academy's Congresses in Uppsala (1966), Teheran (1974), Budapest (1978), Caracas (1983), Sydney (1986), Brisbane (2002) and as general reporter at Athens (1994). He has been a consultant on family law and social legislation to U.S. congressional committees, state legislatures, and judicial and executive commissions.
Professor Krause is a member of the American Bar Association (where he served on the Family Law Section's Council and as committee chairman), the American Law Institute (where he served as an adviser to the Family Law Project), the Illinois Bar Association (where he was a council member of the Sections on Family Law and International Law), the American Association for the Comparative Study of Law (Director 1980-97), the International Society of Family Law (where he served as vice president from 1973-77 and on the executive council since 1977), and the Order of the Coif.
He served on the Board of Editors of the Michigan Law Review (1957-58), the Family Law Quarterly (since 1971), the Journal of Legal Education (1988-91), the American Journal of Comparative Law (since 1991), the (Journal of) Deutsches und Europäisches Familienrecht (1998-2001), and the Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy. He was president of the Illinois chapter of the Alexander von Humboldt Association of America and served on the Association's national Board of Directors. He has authored or edited a dozen books and more than 100 contributions to professional journals and chapters in books. Two law review issues containing bibliographies were dedicated to him: Journal of Contemporary Health Law and Policy, (Vol. 12; Issue 2, Spring 1996) and University Illinois Law Review, (Vol.1997; Number 3, Spring 1997).