Alex Kozinski

On December 9, 2019, Kozinski argued before the 9th circuit for the first time since his resignation due to the scandal. Kozinski argued for a plaintiff suing over intellectual property.

Some former Kozinski clerks have observed that because Kozinski retired from the bench after the first fifteen women accused him of misconduct, "additional targets of, or witnesses to, Kozinski's transgressions" will not be likely to speak publicly. His former clerk, Brett Kavanaugh, during his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee taking up his nomination for the Supreme Court, received written questions tendered to him by Senator Chris Coons about any knowledge of Kozinski's inappropriate behavior, including his circulations of sexually explicit emails via his "Easy Rider Gag List." Though Coons had asked him, on September 10, 2018, to review his emails from the judge, Kavanaugh's written and oral responses were vague, and skirted the senator's direct inquiry.

In an interview on CBS's 60 Minutes in April 2017, Kozinski talked about his support for the death penalty but with the reservation that death by lethal injection should no longer be used. He advocated the use of the guillotine or firing squad and said that for any country that wants to take human life, citizens should be prepared to watch the proceedings.

On December 8, 2017, Kozinski was accused of misconduct by six women including former law clerks and junior staffers,

On December 18, 2017, Kozinski announced his immediate retirement, though stepped down in a way that lets him keep his retirement benefits. It's unknown whether the investigation on Kozinski will continue. He stated during his resignation that the women must have misunderstood his "broad sense of humor" and "candid way of speaking."

On March 17, 2017, Kozinski wrote a dissenting opinion when the 9th circuit denied an en banc review after a 3 judge panel blocked Trump's asylum restrictions. Kozinski was criticized by Stephen Reinhardt and Marsha S. Berzon in 2 separate concurring opinions for doing something he does not have jurisdiction to and trying to straight up overturn the initial panel. The Supreme Court later reversed the 9th circuit in Trump v. Hawaii. Kozinski was joined by Jay Bybee, Consuelo Callahan, Carlos Bea, and Sandra Segal Ikuta.

In May 2017, Kozinski wrote for the narrowly divided en banc circuit when it found that the United States District Court for the Southern District of California's policy of indiscriminately shackling criminal defendants in all pretrial hearings violated the Constitution's Due Process Clause. In March 2018, the court's judgment was vacated as moot by the unanimous Supreme Court of the United States in United States v. Sanchez-Gomez.

Kozinski has been accused of sexual misconduct, ranging from harassment to assault, by more than fifteen women. Former Kozinski clerk Katherine Ku has described Kozinski's chambers—where three or four law clerks, one or two judicial assistants, and one or more judicial externs typically worked at a given time—as a "hostile, demeaning and persistently sexualized environment." An image posted on the legal gossip blog Underneath their Robes shows Kozinski with a law clerk draped around him.

On December 14, the chief judge of the 9th Circuit referred the matters for investigation and a day later assigned them to the 2nd Circuit.

In July 2014, Joseph Rudolph Wood, who had been sentenced to death, filed a motion before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals claiming a right to know which chemicals were included in the lethal injection that was to be used to execute him. While the court denied his motion, Kozinski issued a dissenting opinion, calling the use of drugs a "misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and peaceful." He went on to argue that states should revert to more primitive methods like the guillotine, electric chair, gas chamber, and firing squads because they are accurate and do not mask the brutality. He wrote, "Sure, firing squads can be messy, but if we are willing to carry out executions, we should not shield ourselves from the reality that we are shedding human blood. If we, as a society, cannot stomach the splatter from an execution carried out by firing squad, then we shouldn't be carrying out executions at all." Wood's execution subsequently took 1 hour 57 min before he was pronounced dead.

The Ninth Circuit had originally denied Thompson's habeas petition attacking the state court decision. Two days before Thompson's scheduled execution, the Ninth Circuit en banc reversed (7–4) the earlier denial.

Kozinski dissented from an order rejecting the suggestion for rehearing en banc an appeal filed by Vanna White against Samsung for depicting a robot on a Wheel of Fortune–style set in a humorous advertisement. While the Ninth Circuit held in favor of White, Kozinski dissented: "All creators draw in part on the work of those who came before, referring to it, building on it, poking fun at it; we call this creativity, not piracy."

In February 2013, Kozinski wrote an opinion reversing a district court ruling that had denied Japanese whalers Institute of Cetacean Research a preliminary injunction against the US-based anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Kozinski found that the militant conservationist group were "pirates," reversed the denial of injunction by the district court, and affirmed its own provisional injunction against Sea Shepherd. The injunction bars Sea Shepherd from approaching within 500 yards of ICS vessels.

In 2012, after prosecutors used similar tactics in another case, United States v. Leal-Del Carmen, Kozinski's position in Ramirez-Lopez became the law in the Ninth Circuit.

During his tenure as a court of appeals judge, he became a prominent feeder judge. Between 2009–13, he placed nine of his clerks on the United States Supreme Court, the fifth most of any judge during that time period. He was particularly successful placing his clerks with Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he had himself clerked.

In 2008, The Los Angeles Times revealed Kozinski "maintained a publicly accessible website featuring sexually explicit photos and videos." Kozinski had collected a "vast" number of images sent to him via e-mail over many years and retained them on a personal web server in his home. Only a "small fraction" of the images were offensive. Kozinski believed that only invited friends and family were able to view the image directory. Nonetheless, he called for an ethics investigation of himself. In July 2009, a panel, headed by Judge Anthony Scirica, wrote that Kozinski should have administered his web server more carefully but that Kozinski's apology and deletion of the web site "properly conclude" the matter.

Kozinski was assigned an obscenity case, similar to that in Miller v. California. Ira Isaacs was accused of distributing videos depicting bestiality and other images. During the trial on June 11, 2008, the Los Angeles Times reported that Kozinski had "maintained a publicly accessible Web site featuring sexually explicit photos and videos" at alex.kozinski.com." The Times reported that the site included a photo of naked women on all fours painted to look like cows; a video of a half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal; images of masturbation and public and contortionist sex; a slide show striptease featuring a transgender woman; a series of photos of women's crotches as seen through snug fitting clothing or underwear; and content with themes of defecation and urination. Kozinski admitted that some of the material was inappropriate but defended other content as "funny."

On June 15, 2008, it was reported that Kozinski had recused himself from the case. On June 5, 2009, the Judicial Council of the Third Circuit issued an opinion clearing Kozinski of any wrongdoing.

He served as Chief Judge of the circuit from December 1, 2007, to December 1, 2014. In that capacity, he received complaints about Montana Federal Presiding Judge Richard Cebull, who had sent hundreds of emails disparaging women, racial minorities and liberal politicians. One joked that President Barack Obama's birth was the product of a sexual relationship between Obama's mother and a dog. Kozinski appointed a five-judge panel to review the matter in which he was the chair. It recommended disciplinary measures but not removal; the particulars of the investigation were largely kept confidential, at Kozinski's initiative.

On November 30, 2007, he became the tenth chief judge of the Ninth Circuit. His term as chief judge ended on December 1, 2014, when he was succeeded by Judge Sidney Runyan Thomas.

In 2005, after concluding that the 9th Circuit insufficiently addressed breaches of judicial conduct by Judge Manuel Real, after rules had been enacted to discourage behavior that would initiate "a substantial and widespread lowering of public confidence in the courts among reasonable people," Kozinski demanded the actual imposition of higher standards, writing,"It does not inspire confidence in the federal judiciary, when we treat our own so much better than we treat everyone else." Kozinski was persuasive and Real's case was reopened and he was disciplined.

Kozinski had previously been involved in a dispute over government monitoring of federal court employees' computers. Administrative Office head Ralph Mecham dropped the monitoring program but protested in the press. In 2001, Kozinski, who possesses sophisticated computer skills, personally disabled software which blocked federal court computers in three appellate circuits from receiving pornography.

In the 2000s, while defending the Ninth Circuit against criticism because of a recent controversial decision, Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow, Kozinski, who had not been part of the case, emphasized judicial independence: "It seems to me that this is what makes this country truly great—that we can have a judiciary where the person who appoints you doesn't own you." He also took a stand against the charge that the Ninth Circuit is overly liberal: "I can say with some confidence that cries that the Ninth Circuit is so liberal are just simply misplaced."

Yet another of Kozinski's high-profile cases was the lawsuit filed by Mattel against MCA Records, the record label of Danish pop-dance group Aqua, for "turning Barbie into a sex object" in their 1997 song "Barbie Girl." Kozinski opened the case with: "If this were a sci-fi melodrama, it might be called Speech-Zilla meets Trademark Kong" and famously concluded his 2002 opinion with the words: "The parties are advised to chill."

Kozinski was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on June 5, 1985, to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to a new seat created by 98 Stat. 333. Before the confirmation vote took place, former employees from Kozinski's time at the Office of Special Counsel warned the Senate that Kozinski was "harsh, cruel, demeaning, sadistic, disingenuous and without compassion." He was nonetheless confirmed by the United States Senate by a vote of 54 to 43 on November 7, 1985, and he received commission the same day. At 35, he was the youngest federal Appeals Court judge at the time of appointment.

Complaints about Kozinski's abusive employment practices were raised as early as 1985 by former Kozinski employees. Those employees claimed Kozinski was unqualified to join the 9th Circuit "because of a harsh temperament, questionable decisions and misleading testimony before the Judiciary Committee." They said Kozinski was "harsh, cruel, demeaning, sadistic, disingenuous and without compassion," and that his actions as a boss "portray[ed] an unusual degree of hostility . . . and at times an almost complete disregard for the consequences of the actions upon individuals."

Kozinski served as a trial judge of the United States Court of Claims in 1982, serving as Chief of Trial Division that year.

Kozinski was nominated by President Ronald Reagan on August 10, 1982, to the United States Claims Court, to a new seat authorized by 96 Stat. 27. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 20, 1982, and received commission on October 1, 1982. He served as Chief Judge from 1982 to 1985. His service terminated on February 9, 1985, due to resignation.

Kozinski attended the University of California, Los Angeles, graduating in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. He then attended the UCLA School of Law, graduating in 1975 ranked first in his class. He was a law clerk for Judge (later Supreme Court Justice) Anthony Kennedy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (1975–76) and for Chief Justice Warren Burger of the Supreme Court of the United States (1976–77). He was in private practice with Forry, Golbert, Singer & Gelles in Los Angeles (1977–79) and Covington & Burling in Washington, D.C. (1979–81). He was a Deputy Legal Counsel of the Office of the President-Elect in Washington, D.C. (1980–81) and an Assistant Counsel for the Office of Counsel to the President in Washington, D.C. (1981). He was a Special Counsel for the Merit Systems Protection Board in Washington, D.C. (1981–82).

In 1958, Kozinski's parents applied to the Romanian government for permission to emigrate from the country. Four years later, in 1962, when he was 12, his parents brought him to the United States. The family settled in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, where his father ran a small grocery store. Kozinski, who had grown up as a committed communist in Bucharest, became what he described as "an instant capitalist" when he took his first trip outside of the Iron Curtain, to Vienna, where he partook of such luxuries as chewing gum and bananas.

Alex Kozinski (/k ə ˈ z ɪ n s k i / ; born July 23, 1950) is a Romanian-born American jurist and lawyer who was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1985 to 2017. Kozinski was a prominent and influential judge, and many of his law clerks went on to clerk for the U.S. Supreme Court. However, his career ended in 2017 when he abruptly retired after over a dozen former female law clerks and legal staffers accused him of sexual harassment and abusive practices.

Kozinski was born to a Jewish family in Bucharest, Romania, in July 1950. Kozinski's father, Moses, survived the Holocaust, despite spending four years in Transnistrian concentration camps where tens of thousands of Jews perished. His mother, Sabine, lived through the war years in a Romanian ghetto.