Kozinski: L.A. Times Edit Says ‘So What?’ Kozinski on Judging Judges

[WSJ Law Blog]

Here are highlights from today’s news and commentary about L’Affaire Kozinski. Here’s backstory from the Law Blog.

L.A. Times Opinion Asks ‘So What?’

It’s not the place we’d expect it hear it from, but it’s a fair question nonetheless. The edit section of the L.A. Times — breaker of the Kozinski story in its news pages — makes points that many readers of this blog have articulated: Pornography is widely available and legal, the paper says. They reject the argument that judges should be held to a different standard. Still, the paper says, Kozinski should recuse himself from the obscenity trial he’s presiding over, “not because there is any readily apparent conflict but because the website controversy has become a distraction and will undermine public trust in the verdict.” LB readers: Agree?

The Recorder: Also from the left coast, the Recorder of the AmLaw family points out that Judge Kozinski, who himself yesterday called for a judicial ethics investigation of this brouhaha, has been out there on the subject before. A few years ago after districit judge Manuel Real was accused of improperly interfering in a bankruptcy case to protect a probationer he was supervising, another circuit judge dismissed the complaint without appointing a special committee to investigate, a decision eventually confirmed by the Ninth Circuit. But Kozinski issued a bitter dissent.

“Congress has surely not made us the most powerful judges in the world so we can bestow thousands of dollars of bounties on our personal favorites whenever we feel like it,” Kozinski wrote at the time. He said the 10-member Judicial Council of the 9th Circuit should have imposed a public reprimand and ordered Real to repay the owner of the home. Here’s a piece on that dissent by Justin Scheck, now part of the Journal family.

WSJ: Law Blog colleague Nathan Koppel today takes a look at what ethics experts say any investigative panel should look for — whether the judge took ample measures to keep material private and whether and to what extent he disseminated it. Koppel also notes that the controversy comes at a time when the federal court system is trying to bolster how it monitors itself. A federal judicial oversight body in March passed disciplinary rules that call on circuit courts to be more thorough and transparent in misconduct investigations.