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As Emails Show, Ribald Sense of Humor Is Signature Kozinski

By Nathan Koppel

One question that has been asked of the flap over Judge Kozinski is whether the images uploaded to his server were pornographic or merely humorous. Some were sexually explicit, to be sure, but were they meant to arouse or amuse? And does that matter?

The Ninth Circuit jurist told the L.A. Times that he thought the images were strictly private. He conceded that some of the images were inappropriate, but he said that he found them humorous.

It’s a comment in line with the sense of humor for which he is known. Using the handle “Easy Rider, ” the judge periodically sends out bawdy jokes to a group he call the “easy rider gag list,” which includes journalists and others.

One joke tells of the golfer who killed his wife by hitting a tee shot that strikes her in the temple. Days later, a coroner calls and tells the golfer that the coroner also discovered a bruise on the wife’s hip. “Do you know anything about this?” the coroner asks. “Yes,” the golfer says, “that would have been my mulligan.”

The Kozinski jokes border on R-rated at times, like the one about the woman who confesses to her priest that “my boyfriend made mad, passionate love to me seven times.” The priest tells the woman to squeeze 7 lemons into a glass and drink it down. “Will this cleanse me of my sins?” she asks. “No,” the priest says, “but it will wipe that grin off your face.”

The jokes suggest that Kozinsky is both ribald and unusually free spirited for someone of his stature. Sure, we all have uncles who send around this kind of stuff, but the chief judge of the 9th Circuit? Maybe that’s inappropriate behavior, or maybe it’s refreshingly candid behavior from the normally cloaked federal judiciary.

The law blog checked in with Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor who specializes in judicial ethics, to get his thoughts. As a moral matter, he says, humor, however off color, typically operates on a higher plane than sexual prurience. But that doesn’t necessarily end the discussion, he says. Images can be humorous to one but so offensive to others that they arguably “undermine the integrity of the judiciary,” he says: “As a regulator, you get uneasy drawing lines between what is bawdy and what is creepy.”

Readers: Is the furor surrounding the material on the judge’s server unwarranted if the images merely tickled his funny bone?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 13, 2008 (boomark / email).