Otto Kerner Jr. was an American jurist and politician. He served as the 33rd governor of Illinois from 1961 to 1968 and chaired the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. He was then appointed a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. He was forced to step down from the bench after being convicted of mail fraud in 1974.

The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission after its chair, Governor Otto Kerner Jr. of Illinois, was an 11-member Presidential Commission established in July 1967 by President Lyndon B. Johnson in Executive Order 11365 to investigate the causes of over 150 riots throughout the country in 1967 and to provide recommendations that would prevent them from reoccurring.