Alex Kozinski

Alex Kozinski is a Romanian-American jurist who served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 1985 to 2017, including a tenure as Chief Judge from 2007 to 2014. Appointed to the federal appellate bench by President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, Kozinski became one of the youngest federal appeals court judges in the nation's history at age 35. His judicial career, which spanned more than three decades, came to an end when he retired in 2017 following allegations of sexual harassment from multiple former law clerks and legal staff members. Prior to his appellate service, he held positions in both the executive and judicial branches, including clerkships with future Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice Warren Burger.

Early life and legal career

Kozinski was born in July 1950 in Bucharest, Romania, during the period when the country was under communist rule as the Romanian People's Republic. He was born into a Romanian Jewish family, and both of his parents were Holocaust survivors who had endured extraordinary hardship during World War II. His father, Moses Kozinski, spent four years confined in Transnistrian concentration camps, facilities where tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners perished. His mother, Sabine, survived the war years living in a Romanian ghetto under severe restrictions and deprivation.

Growing up in communist Romania, Kozinski was raised with the ideology of the state and became what he later described as a committed communist during his childhood years. In 1958, when Kozinski was approximately eight years old, his parents applied to the Romanian government for permission to leave the country. The approval process took four years, and the family finally received permission to emigrate in 1962, when Kozinski was twelve years old. The family's departure from Romania in late December 1961 marked a transformative moment in Kozinski's life. During the journey westward, the train stopped in Vienna, Austria, providing Kozinski with his first exposure to life outside the Iron Curtain. He later recounted that he had initially planned to travel to the West to share his knowledge of communism and help dismantle capitalism, believing the propaganda he had been taught about Western oppression. However, upon arriving in Vienna and encountering consumer goods such as chewing gum, chocolate, and abundant bananas—luxuries that were scarce or unavailable in Romania—his worldview underwent an immediate transformation. He recalled that in Romania, his father had to work half a day to obtain just three bananas, while in Vienna's open-air markets, bananas were plentiful and inexpensive. This stark contrast led to what he described as an instantaneous conversion to capitalism, with no need for conscious recalculation of his beliefs.

The Kozinski family immigrated to the United States in 1962 and settled in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. There, his father Moses operated a small grocery store to support the family. Kozinski pursued his undergraduate education at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studied economics and graduated in 1972 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, cum laude. He continued his education at UCLA School of Law, where he distinguished himself academically and served as a managing editor of the UCLA Law Review. He graduated in 1975 with a Juris Doctor degree, finishing first in his class.

Following law school, Kozinski embarked on a prestigious clerkship career. From 1975 to 1976, he clerked for Judge Anthony Kennedy of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, who would later be appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States. He then served as a law clerk to Chief Justice Warren Burger of the Supreme Court from 1976 to 1977. After completing his clerkships, Kozinski entered private legal practice, working as an associate attorney with the law firm Forry, Golbert, Singer & Gelles from 1977 to 1979, and then with the prominent firm Covington & Burling from 1979 to 1981.

Kozinski's career then shifted to government service. He served as Deputy Legal Counsel in the Office of the President-Elect in Washington, D.C., from 1980 to 1981, and subsequently as Assistant Counsel in the Office of Counsel to the President in 1981. He then took a position as Special Counsel for the Merit Systems Protection Board in Washington, D.C., serving from 1981 to 1982. During his time at the Office of Special Counsel, Kozinski became involved in a controversial incident that would later affect his judicial career. Despite recommendations from his staff against terminating a mining safety whistleblower, Kozinski overruled those recommendations and provided guidance to the legal staff of Interior Secretary James G. Watt on how to revise the proposed termination to make it legally defensible. When this incident became public during his later confirmation hearings for the Ninth Circuit, it generated significant opposition and reportedly prevented what had been a planned elevation to the Supreme Court.

Federal appellate service

Kozinski's federal judicial career began when he served as a trial judge on the United States Court of Claims in 1982, where he also served as Chief of the Trial Division that same year. President Ronald Reagan nominated him on August 10, 1982, to the newly created United States Claims Court, to fill a seat authorized by federal statute. The Senate confirmed him on August 20, 1982, and he received his commission on October 1, 1982. He served as Chief Judge of that court from 1982 to 1985, but his service there terminated on February 9, 1985, when he resigned from the position.

President Reagan nominated Kozinski to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on June 5, 1985, to fill a newly created seat established by federal statute. The nomination proved contentious. Before the confirmation vote, former employees who had worked with Kozinski during his time at the Office of Special Counsel came forward to warn the Senate about his management style and temperament, describing him as harsh, cruel, demeaning, sadistic, disingenuous, and lacking in compassion. Despite these warnings and the earlier controversy regarding the whistleblower incident, the Senate confirmed Kozinski by a vote of 54 to 43 on November 7, 1985. He received his commission the same day. At 35 years of age, he became the youngest federal appeals court judge in the country at the time of his appointment.

During his tenure on the Ninth Circuit, Kozinski became involved in matters of judicial ethics and conduct. In 2005, he took a strong position regarding the judicial conduct of Judge Manuel Real, concluding that the Ninth Circuit had insufficiently addressed breaches of judicial conduct by Real after rules had been enacted to discourage behavior that would cause a substantial and widespread lowering of public confidence in the courts among reasonable people. Kozinski wrote critically about the situation, stating that it did not inspire confidence in the federal judiciary when judges treated their own colleagues much better than they treated everyone else. His arguments proved persuasive, and Real's case was reopened, resulting in disciplinary action.

Kozinski served as Chief Judge of the Ninth Circuit from December 1, 2007, to December 1, 2014, a seven-year term during which he held administrative and leadership responsibilities for one of the largest and most influential federal appellate courts in the nation. His service on the Ninth Circuit ended in 2017 when he retired from the bench. The retirement followed the emergence of allegations from more than a dozen former female law clerks and legal staff members who accused him of sexual harassment and abusive workplace practices. Kozinski had previously faced an ethics hearing concerning inappropriate sexual material, an issue that had surfaced earlier in his judicial career.

Jurisprudence and legacy

Kozinski's judicial career left a complex legacy within the federal judiciary. During his more than three decades on the bench, he developed a reputation as a prominent and influential jurist on the Ninth Circuit. Many of the law clerks who worked in his chambers went on to secure clerkships with justices of the United States Supreme Court, a testament to the competitive and prestigious nature of his clerkship program. The pipeline from Kozinski's chambers to the Supreme Court became well-established within the legal community, and a clerkship with him was considered a significant credential for young attorneys pursuing elite legal careers.

The circumstances surrounding the end of Kozinski's judicial service significantly affected how his career would be remembered. The allegations of sexual harassment and abusive practices that emerged in 2017 came from multiple former employees, including law clerks and other legal staff members who had worked with him over the years. These allegations led to his retirement from the bench, bringing an abrupt end to what had been a long and influential judicial career. The earlier ethics hearing regarding inappropriate sexual material had foreshadowed some of the concerns that would ultimately emerge more fully at the end of his tenure.

Kozinski's background as an immigrant who fled communist Romania and his transformation from a committed young communist to what he described as an instant capitalist informed aspects of his worldview and personal narrative. His family's experience as Holocaust survivors and his own childhood experience of emigration from an authoritarian regime to the United States provided a distinctive personal history that set him apart from many of his judicial colleagues. His academic achievements, including graduating first in his class from UCLA School of Law and securing prestigious clerkships with both a future Supreme Court justice and a sitting Chief Justice, demonstrated early professional excellence that carried through to his appointment to the federal bench at an unusually young age.

The controversial aspects of his pre-judicial career, particularly the whistleblower incident during his time at the Office of Special Counsel, generated substantial Senate opposition during his confirmation process, with 43 senators voting against his confirmation to the Ninth Circuit. This level of opposition was notable for a judicial nomination and reflected concerns about his judgment and temperament that had been raised by former colleagues. Nevertheless, he was confirmed and went on to serve for more than three decades, including a seven-year term as Chief Judge of one of the nation's most important federal appellate courts.