Disgraced former Ninth Circuit judge Alex Kozinski has a new op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, which raises the same question it raised the last time he turned up on the Journal’s opinion page: who is giving this fucking guy the proverbial mic again?
Seriously, who is looking to hear from this guy? In 2017, Kozinski retired effective immediately after 15 women accused him of sexual harassment. The allegations included showing clerks pornography in chambers and making sexual comments to the women who worked for him, and more (yes, more) kept coming. His retirement conveniently shut down the misconduct inquiry, and he walked away with full benefits. He did lose his standing in the profession, and he has spent the better part of a decade trying to buy it back. He co-authored a brief in the “Shape of Water” copyright fight. He took a seat at Jenner & Block’s table at an industry dinner. He went back to the Ninth Circuit to argue. He signed on as Donald Trump’s lawyer in the suit to get Trump back on Twitter, then put his name on a brief comparing Trump to Galileo. In between, mainstream outlets kept citing him as an expert, as if 2017 never happened.
This week’s stop on the tour is “The Case for Firing Squads,” published Monday. Its news peg is Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s plan to execute Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan by firing squad on December 3 and to livestream it.
Kozinski is very into the firing squad part, but that isn’t news either.
Kozinski has been pitching this idea for over a decade. In 2014, as chief judge, he dissented in the Joseph Wood case and wrote that if the state is going to kill people, it should drop the pharmaceutical pretense and use rifles. He went on 60 Minutes in 2015 and floated the guillotine, then did it again for Lesley Stahl in 2017. He told Stahl that if society is going to take a life, “we should be willing to watch it.” A healthy chunk of the new op-ed is Kozinski quoting his own 2014 dissent back at us — it’s a rerun with a new Hegseth-shaped intro.
Listen, he isn’t wrong about lethal injection. It took Wood nearly two hours and 15 injections to die. Christa Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital in Tennessee. As currently practiced, the death penalty has become a horror show staffed by people improvising medical procedures they aren’t trained to perform, and it is likely well past the point of cruel and unusual. Where Kozinski and I part ways is the conclusion. The answer to “the state can’t kill people humanely” isn’t better aim, it’s that the state should get out of the business of killing people.
Kozinski’s priorities show in what the op-ed skips. The new and truly horrific part of Hegseth’s plan isn’t the method (the military has used firing squads before), it’s the livestream. No public execution has been held in this country in 90 years, and this one would put the United States in the company of Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, and Somalia. JD Vance said he wouldn’t watch, Pope Leo XIV weighed in, and even George Will called it barbaric.
Kozinski gives all of that one clause in his kicker: he has “some doubts whether livestreaming the execution is advisable.” Then, in the same sentence, he commends Hegseth for his honesty and for showing Hasan mercy. That’s the entire analysis. This is the man who told a national television audience we should be willing to watch, and the livestream is the one question his own framework forces him to answer but Kozinski waves it off on the way to a compliment. This is like writing a theater review of Our American Cousin and briefly mentioning the disturbance in the final act.
That’s because the op-ed was never really about Hasan, or about the spectacle Pete Hegseth is planning for December 3. It’s about putting Alex Kozinski’s name back in circulation as someone whose legal opinions are worth noting, and the Wall Street Journal was happy to give him a platform.
Earlier: Disgraced Former Judge Alex Kozinski Primes Pump For Donald Trump Canceling Elections
Disgraced Judge Alex Kozinski Is Back With A Brief Comparing Donald Trump To Galileo
Disgraced Former Judge Kozinski Gets Perfect Client: Disgraced Former President Trump
Are We Still Citing Judge Kozinski As An Expert?
Disgraced Former Judge Alex Kozinski’s Rehabilitation Tour Continues With Oral Argument
Former Judge Alex Kozinski Faces Lawsuit Over All That Stuff That Made Him Resign
The Biglaw Firm Taking Disgraced Former Judge Kozinski To Dinner
The Rehabilitation Of Disgraced Judge Kozinski Has Begun
Brett Kavanaugh Shares His Reaction To The Alex Kozinski Sexual Harassment Allegations
Case Closed: Judge Kozinski’s Retirement Stops Inquiry Into His Behavior
The Biglaw Partner That Called Out Judge Kozinski
Breaking: Judge Kozinski Is Retiring Effective Immediately
More (Yes, More) Allegations Against Judge Kozinski. Reading Them Will Make You Feel Gross.
What Will It Take To Get Alex Kozinski Off The Ninth Circuit?
Sources Report 3 Kozinski Clerks Are Out
Judge Kozinski Accused Of Sexual Misconduct
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1
