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The LA Times reported today that the chief judge of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Alex Kozinski, admitted to storing sexually explicit content on his public web site. Kozinski is currently presiding over the trial of filmmaker Ira Isaacs on criminal obscenity charges related to videos of bestiality, defecation, and other sexual fetishes.

Kozinski claims that he didn’t know that the files on his site were publicly viewable. In fact, no links led to them from any other pages on the site, so would-be viewers had to know the subdomain under which they were stored — a URL the judge shared only with a few friends. Public access to the entire domain has since been blocked.

As for what used to be accessible, according to the L.A. Times article:

The sexually explicit material on Kozinski’s site earlier this week was extensive, including images of masturbation, public sex and contortionist sex. There was a slide show striptease featuring a transsexual, and a folder that contained a series of photos of women’s crotches as seen through snug fitting clothing or underwear. There were also themes of defecation and urination, though they are not presented in a sexual context.

Kozinski didn’t think any of this material “would qualify as obscene”:

“Is it prurient? I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “I think it’s odd and interesting. It’s part of life.”

Kozinski has since offered to recuse himself from presiding over the obscenity trial, but the defense has no objection to letting him continue (big surprise there). Prosecutors aren’t so sure — they’re discussing the matter with their supervisors in the Department of Justice.

The bigger question here is one that has dogged the justice system for a long time: what exactly is or should be the definition of criminal obscenity? Does it include anything that “is destructive to our society in perniciously subtle ways“? If so, who gets to decide what that means? Should we allow the communication of all materials produced by consenting adults, without the exploitation of the participants? If so, how do you define exploitation?

Do you think Judge Kozinski should be allowed to remain on the case?

UPDATE: Seth has researched the details of the now-unavailable site.