Alex Kozinski
A View From the Bench
Judge Alex Kozinski (born July 23, 1950) is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan on November 7, 1985, Kozinski has won supporters from the left and the right with his common-sense decisions and libertarian instinct. His writing is clear and often humorous, and has been featured in mainstream publications such as Forbes and Slate.
He was born in Bucharest, Romania but his parents, both Holocaust survivors, brought him to America in 1962 (he was only 12). They settled in Los Feliz, California and his father, Moses, ran a small grocery store there.
Kozinski attended John Marshall High School and UCLA. He received his J.D. from UCLA Law School in 1975 (he was one of the top students) and went on to clerk for then-Ninth Circuit Judge Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice Warren Burger. Then he spent a few years in private practice before going to work in the White Hosue counsel’s office for then-President Ronald Reagan. Kozinski received a job as chief judge at the newly-formed Federal Claims Court. Then, at the age of 35, Reagan appointed him to the Ninth Circuit, making him the youngest federal appeals court judge in the country.