Ok, you’re the chief judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California and one of the highest-ranking judges in the land. People say you have a brilliant legal mind, and some people think that you’ll one day be sitting on the Supreme Court. So, what do you do in your spare time?
(a) Pore over legal briefs
(b) Give lectures at bar associations or at university law schools
(c) Post sexually explicit material on your website, including pictures of women on all fours painted like cows, a half-naked man “cavorting” with a farm animal, masturbation, and scenes of public sex.
Judge Alex Kozinski chose (c). When the LA Times inquired about the pictures, he responded that some of them were “funny”, and he said that he’d placed them on the website, because he thought that the public couldn’t access it. Then, the next day, Judge Kozinski told the Times that his son, Yale, called and said that he’d uploaded most of the photos, and that sounded right “because I sure don’t remember putting some of that stuff there.” All of this happened a couple of days before Kozinski was scheduled to hear arguments in a case against Ira Issacs, who is accused of distributing sexual fetish videos that include beastiality! Did Issacs luck out or what?! Overseeing his trial is a guy who’s into bestiality, or at least into viewing it. Of course, the trial was suspended for 48 hours, and Kozinski has now called for the ethics panel to investigate his conduct.
Now, when I first read this story yesterday, I thought…how could this guy have been dumb enough to post that kind of stuff on a publicly accessible website? Naturally, he was under the impression that it was totally private. The LA Times confirmed his son’s claim that it’s on his private server and the domain name is registered to Yale Kozinski. Basically, his son said that he didn’t configure the site properly and didn’t know that it could be accessed by the public. He said that only family and friends had access to the site. Still, it seems like maybe one of those family members or friends sold him out. According to the LA Times,
“Before the site was blocked, visitors to http://alex.kozinski.com saw a message: “Ain’t nothin’ here. Y’all best be movin’ on, compadre.” Only those who knew to type in the name of a subdirectory could see the content on the site, which also included some of Kozinski’s essays and legal writings as well as music files and personal photos.”
How else would a reporter get the name of the subfolder unless someone who knew it sold Kozinski out? Scott Glover, the LA Times journalist, hasn’t said (to the best of my knowledge).
Naturally, people are all upset. To me, the only issue here is that he should recuse himself from this case. That much seems pretty obvious. Should he get in trouble for viewing bestiality? Hell no. The guy can do whatever he wants in his spare time, assuming it is legal, since he’s a judge and all. This is all pretty embarrassing for the Kozinskis, and unfortunately for him, this is going to kill any chance of him ever getting to the Supreme Court. Still, as the LA Times noted, only Congress can fire federal judges, although maybe his fellow judges will censure him (seems unlikely given that it’s California).
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June 12th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
wow. wow. wow.
June 13th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Dude you’re killing me ha…I wonder who leaked this to the LAT? Brilliant…