Alex Kozinski Quotes

United States, Judge
July 23, 1950

Alex Kozinski is a former United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where he served from 1985 until announcing his retirement on December 18, 2017, after a growing number of allegations of improper sexual conduct and abusive practices toward law clerks. Kozinski was chief judge of that court from November 2007 to December 1, 2014. In addition to being a former judge, Kozinski is an essayist and a judicial commentator.

Appellate review is not a magic wand and we undermine public confidence in the judicial process when we make it look like it is.

Alex Kozinski
The parties are advised to chill.

Alex Kozinski
- Chill
- Parties
- Advised

I think the use of lethal injection is the way of lying to ourselves, to make it look like executions are peaceful, are benign, are sort of like going to sleep, and they're not. They're brutal things.

Alex Kozinski
I was born under Communism. I know what it's like to live in a system where you can't speak, you have to whisper. Where the state is so pervasive and so intrusive.

Alex Kozinski
Overprotecting intellectual property is as harmful as underprotecting it. Creativity is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new: Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Overprotection stifles the very creative forces it's supposed to nurture.

Alex Kozinski
Just to prove that even the silliest idea can be pursued to its illogical conclusion, Legal Realism spawned Critical Legal Studies.

Alex Kozinski
- Idea
- Prove
- Conclusion
When the president, Donald Trump, is a litigant I think it's wise for him not to comment on the judges. It's not going to help anything - and all it's going to do is emphasize the weakness of your position.

Alex Kozinski
- President
- Judges
- Comment
In a very real sense, the Constitution is our compact with history . . . but the Constitution can maintain that compact and serve as the lodestar of our political system only if its terms are binding on us. To the extent we depart from the document's language and rely instead on generalities that we see written between the lines, we rob the Constitution of its binding force and give free reign to the fashions and passions of the day.

Alex Kozinski

The majority falls prey to the delusion—popular in some circles—that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth—born of experience—is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people.

Alex Kozinski
- Truth
- Tyranny
- Delusion
This is really a pretty good system you have here. What do you call it? "Due process". We're very proud of it.

Alex Kozinski
- Proud
- Process
- System