There's More Than One Kind of Workplace Civility

The #MeToo cascade has now claimed a federal judge. Alex Kozinski, a colorful and influential libertarian jurist on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, has stepped down amid allegations that he showed female clerks pornography, made workplace comments about having sex, and on some occasions groped female colleagues.

In his resignation statement, Kozinski blamed his “broad sense of humor” and said he “may not have been mindful enough of the special challenges and pressures that women face in the workplace.” It’s certainly possible that Kozinski, a well-known eccentric and no Harvey Weinstein, didn’t mean to intimidate or discomfit his clerks. But his alleged behavior violated a widely accepted norm for workplace interactions, particularly with subordinates. (I have known Kozinski and his wife Marcy Tiffany professionally since the 1990s, when I was editor of Reason magazine and they were frequent guests and occasional emcees at Reason events.)