Kozinski, We Thought We Knew You

Kozinski? Isn't he the unibomber guy?

Along with our own language of legalese, the law bubble has it's own kind of celebrities. While most normal people are talking about Kobe or Obama, the law bubble has been buzzing about Judge Alex Kozinski. Like Judge Learned Hand (yes, that's his real name) and Judge Richard Posner, Judge Kozinski is in the category of well-respected, influential, and intelligent judges who will never get appointed to the Supreme Court.

Judge Kozinski (no relation to unibomber Ted Kaczynski) is the Reagan-appointed Chief Judge on the notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit. The big case in the Ninth right now is an obscenity case. Turns out that Judge Kozinski had sexually explicit content on his website. I won't go into what the images entailed, you can read the article for yourself. So far the trial has been suspended for possible conflict issues, and Kozinski has called for an investigation on himself.

I think the jaws of many law students across the country dropped when that story hit the news. Or we started laughing. And we all thought the same two things: oh ninth circuit, oh Reagan appointee (translate: conservative).

[Photo of Kozinski courtesy of California Lawyer Magazine]