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Judge Alex Kozinski (born July 23, 1950) is a judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and a popular essayist.
Kozinski was born in Bucharest, Romania but his parents, both Holocaust survivors, brought him to United States in 1962 when he was 12. They settled in Los Feliz, Los Angeles and his father, Moses, ran a small grocery store there.
Kozinski attended John Marshall High School and University of California, Los Angeles. He received his J.D. from UCLA Law School in 1975 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 House counsel's office under President Ronald Reagan.
Kozinski's first judicial appointment was as chief judge at the newly-formed Federal Claims Court. In 1985, age 35, Kozinki was appointed to the Ninth Circuit by Reagan, making him the youngest federal appeals court judge in the country.
Kozinski has won admirers across the political spectrum with his common-sense decisions and libertarian instinct. As an essayist, his writing is clear and often humorous, and has been featured in mainstream publications such as Slate, The New Yorker, The New Republic and The National Review. He also has a reputation as an active and sometimes intimidating questioner during oral argument.
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