Alex Kozinski | |
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Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit | |
In office December 1, 2007 – December 1, 2014 |
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Preceded by | Mary Schroeder |
Succeeded by | Sidney Thomas |
Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit | |
Assumed office November 7, 1985 |
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Appointed by | Ronald Reagan |
Preceded by | Seat established |
Personal details | |
Born |
Bucharest, Romania |
July 23, 1950
Education | University of California, Los Angeles (BA, JD) |
Alex Kozinski (born July 23, 1950) is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where he has served since 1985. He was Chief Judge of that court from November 2007 to December 1, 2014. In addition to his judicial duties, Kozinski is an essayist and a judicial commentator.
Kozinski was born to a Jewish family in Bucharest, Romania, in July 1950. In 1962, when he was 12, his parents, both Holocaust survivors, brought him to the United States. The family settled in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, where his father, Moses, ran a small grocery store. Kozinski, who had grown up as a committed communist in Bucharest, became what he described as "an instant capitalist" when he took his first trip outside of the Iron Curtain, to Vienna, where he partook of such luxuries as chewing gum and bananas.
Kozinski graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, receiving an A.B. degree in 1972, and from the UCLA School of Law, receiving a J.D. degree in 1975. Kozinski clerked for future Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Ninth Circuit from 1975 to 1976, and then for Chief Justice of the United States Warren E. Burger from 1976 to 1977.
From June 5, 1981 to August 1982, Kozinski served as the first U.S. Special Counsel appointed by President Ronald Reagan.