Academic

?Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, was accused in a complaint by a retired court executive of breaking into a judicial computer security system in 2001 to restore access to pornographic Web sites.?

By Ann Bartow

Detailed account by Cynthia Cotts at Bloomberg News here. Below is an excerpt:

Ralph Mecham, who headed the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in Washington for 21 years until retiring in 2006, made the allegations in a Nov. 24 complaint to the U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. That court is already considering a separate complaint against the chief judge over sexually explicit images on his Web site.

Mecham said U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist became ?enraged? because a committee of federal judges disobeyed his recommendation to discipline Kozinski after he disabled computer filter software meant to block sexually explicit Web sites, according to the complaint.

?Tell Kozinski to watch pornography at home and not in his own court,? Rehnquist told Mecham, according to his complaint. Mecham said he wants Kozinski to resign or be impeached by Congress because he allegedly destroyed government property and bragged about it.

Mecham didn?t provide a recording or transcript of the remarks he said were made by Rehnquist, who died in 2005. Mecham supplied a copy of his complaint to Bloomberg.

Full post as published by Feminist Law Professors on November 27, 2008 (boomark / email).