On Dec. 1, Judge Alex Kozinski will become the first conservative judge in a decade to lead the notoriously liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Born in Bucharest, Romania, to Holocaust survivors, Kozinski moved to America when he was 12. He was appointed to the 9th Circuit by former President Ronald Reagan at age 35 — then the youngest federal appeals judge in the country — and has spent 22 years on the bench. As chief judge, he will have a seat on the Judicial Conference of the United States.
Not only is Kozinksi a judge with conservative values, but he’s also a judge with charm. In his youth, he appeared on The Dating Game and won. In 2004, he was voted the “No.1 Male Superhottie” of the federal judiciary.
Kozinski talks about the 9th Circuit and his new position as chief judge:
1. What do you think about your new opportunity?
In the formal system, you get to be chief judge if you’re around long enough and you get enough grey hair, so it was my turn to become chief judge because I was next in seniority. It’s not something that I sought after or campaigned for or particularly desired, but it came around and I thought it was the right thing to do to accept it.
2. How would you describe yourself as a judge?
I was appointed by a conservative president, and I tend to have conservative instincts, but I also believe in important principles of freedom — questions of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, questions of personal privacy and guarding against intrusion from the government. I think those things are terribly important values in our Constitution. So I would consider myself a constitutionalist.
3. Some have said that the 9th Circuit is too big to be effective and have even suggested abolishing the entire court. How do you feel about that?
I don’t think they can abolish the 9th circuit. There has to be a court of appeals here. The important thing is to make sure that the president fills available vacancies as they become open, and I think that as that happens, this court and every other court will become more in line with the views of the current administration.
We, in the 9th circuit, have been fortunate. We’ve had many vacancies for many years, but now all but one of our 28 positions is filled. I think that to the extent the president has managed to fill his vacancies, I think you will see the 9th Circuit in its composition more nearly reflects the rest of the fellow judiciary and more of the nation.
4. What do you think about a good number of the 9th Circuit decisions being reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court?
Well, they generally take cases when they disagree with them so it is not unusual. Most circuits wind up having more reversals than affirmatives in any one term. We are bigger than any other circuits, so we’re going to have more reversals. But I think something that we need to work on more in these coming years is trying to anticipate where the Supreme Court is going and try to come up with avoiding quite so many reversals. I think it’s an important objective for us and for the people we serve.
5. I understand that you were raised under communism. What was that like and how do you think it influences you today?
If we’re not vigilant to learn from history, it’s bound to repeat itself. I’m afraid sometimes we’re a little too lackadaisical and we treat some of the horrors of the past as just ancient history, as something that’s not likely to repeat itself. But I think we need to be very, very vigilant both at home and abroad. The 20th century I don’t think will be the last century when we have seen things like the Holocaust and communism and killing fields of various communist nations, and I’m afraid that this is only something that’s bound to repeat itself.
