Judge Alex Kosinski Porn Sex Harassment Case Under Investigation

Federal Appeals Court Judge Alex Kozinski who has been accused of various forms of sexual misconduct by a series of women in the legal profession who have worked either for or with the 67-year-old judge—including one former law clerk who alleged that Kosinski forced her view porn on his office computer and tell him whether the explicit images aroused her—will now be the subject of an official court investigation into his behavior. The investigation was ordered by United States Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who directed the chief judge of the U.S. Second Circuit Court, Robert Katzman, to take over the investigation into Kozinski, who was the subject of a Washington Post exposé earlier this month in which six women charged the judge, who was appointed to the Ninth Circuit bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1985, with inappropriate sexual conduct. The Ninth Circuit is based in San Francisco. The Second Circuit’s courthouse is in lower Manhattan, New York City. See the AVN.com article about the allegations against Kosinski at this link. Since the Post article appeared, more women have come forward with stories about Kosinski’s actions, and his behavior toward women was described as “an open secret” in the legal community.  Nancy Rapoport, a former clerk for another judge said that Kozinski once invited her out to cocktails with other law clerks. But when she arrived no one was present except Kozinski who proceeded to ask her, “What do single girls in San Francisco do for sex?”  And on Thursday, the legal correspondent for the online political magazine Slate, Dahlia Lithwick, wrote in the publication of interactions between herself and Kozinski that,  she said, left her feeling “small and very dirty,” including a phone call Lithwick placed to a female clerk in Kozinski’s office, only to have Kosinski himself pick up the phone and ask her, “What are you wearing?” Joanna Grossman, now a law professor at Southern Methodist University, said on her Twitter account that when she served as a law clerk in the Ninth Circuit Court, “Kozinski sent a memo to all the judges suggesting that a rule prohibiting female attorneys from wearing push-up bras would be more effective than the newly convened Gender Bias Task Force. His disrespect for women is legendary.” Roberts assigned the investigation to the Second Circuit Court after Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Sidney Thomas determined that an investigation into Kosinski was required "in the interest of the effective and expeditious administration of the business of the courts."