The Fourth Annual Judge William A. Ingram Memorial Symposium is being held Tuesday Oct. 17 in the Recital Hall on the Santa Clara University campus from 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. The topic is "Civility in the Legal Profession: The Labeling, Rating and Ranking of Judges." The panelists consist of the Honorable Alex Kozinski, and the Honorable Stephen R. Reinhardt, both Circuit Judges with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. SCU School of Law Professor Gerald F. Uelman will be the moderator.
Judge Alex Kozinski (born July 23, 1950) is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Appointed by President Ronald Reagan on November 7, 1985, Kozinski has won supporters from the left and the right with his common-sense decisions and libertarian instinct. His writing is clear and often humorous, and has been featured in mainstream publications such as Forbes and Slate.
He was born in Bucharest, Romania but his parents, both Holocaust survivors, brought him to America in 1962 (he was only 12). They settled in Los Feliz, California and his father, Moses, ran a small grocery store there.
Kozinski attended John Marshall High School and UCLA. He received his J.D. from UCLA Law School in 1975 (he was one of the top students) and went on to clerk for then-Ninth Circuit Judge Anthony Kennedy and Chief Justice Warren Burger. Then he spent a few years in private practice before going to work in the White House counsel’s office for then-President Ronald Reagan. Kozinski received a job as chief judge at the newly-formed Federal Claims Court. Then, at the age of 35, Reagan appointed him to the Ninth Circuit, making him the youngest federal appeals court judge in the country.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt graduated from University High School in Los Angeles. He enrolled in Pomona College and graduated three years later with an A.B.(Government) in 1951. In 1954, he received an LL.B from Yale Law School.
After law school, Reinhardt worked at the legal counsel’s office in Washington DC the United States Air Force as a lieutenant. Two years later, he clerked for district judge Luther Youngdahl, a former governor of Minnesota, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He then entered private practice, working for the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers LLP from 1958 until 1959 practicing entertainment law. After two years at O’Melveny & Myers, he began working at a small activist firm in Los Angeles that became Fogel, Julber, Reinhardt, Rotschild & Feldman specializing in labor law.
Reinhardt served as a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, California Advisory Committee from 1962 to 1974 and was its Vice Chairman from 1969 to 1974. He also served as member of the Democratic National Committee and as an unpaid adviser to former Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley and former California governor Jerry Brown. In 1975 he was appointed to the Los Angeles Police Commission, which he chaired from 1978 until his judicial confirmation in 1980. As a judge, Reinhardt is considered a highly intelligent, hardworking liberal firebrand. He is also one of the most overturned judges in the history of the U.S. courts; the Supreme Court’s reversals of his decisions are often unanimous.
Reinhardt continued his public service as Secretary of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Los Angeles Amateur Athletic Foundation.
Judge William A. Ingram served as a Judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for twenty-six years, including three years as its Chief Judge. The William A. Ingram Inn of Court, which draws its pupils from Stanford, Santa Clara and Lincoln Law Schools , was renamed to honor Judge Ingram, one of the Inn’s founders, and Judge Ingram’s family designated the Inn to receive memorial contributions to endow this Memorial Symposium.
Judge Ingram was a mentor to many lawyers and judges in our community, and the Inn and this symposium seek to promote the ideals of civility, collegiality, and professionalism that he personified.
