UNITED STATES
CNN
December 31, 2017
By Ariane de Vogue, Supreme Court Reporter
(CNN) Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts announced in an annual report on Sunday that he has called for an evaluation of how the judicial branch handles allegations of sexual harassment.
In his year-end report on the state of the judiciary, Roberts said recent events “have illuminated the depth of the problem of sexual harassment in the workplace” and made clear that the “judicial branch is not immune.”
“The judiciary will begin 2018 by undertaking a careful evaluation of whether its standards of conduct and its procedures for investigating and correcting inappropriate behavior are adequate to ensure an exemplary workplace for every judge and every court employee,” Roberts wrote.
The announcement comes after Judge Alex Kozinski of the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals announced his retirement earlier this month after a Washington Post story detailed accusations of sexual misconduct from several former clerks and junior staffers. The article included the account of a former clerk who said Kozinski made her look at pornographic images and asked whether they sexually aroused her.
Without getting into specifics, Kozinski apologized for his actions in a statement released by his lawyer, but also defended what he called his “broad sense of humor.”
“I’ve always had a broad sense of humor and a candid way of speaking to both male and female law clerks alike,” Kozinski wrote. “In doing so, I may not have been mindful enough of the special challenges and pressures that women face in the workplace. It grieves me to learn that I caused any of my clerks to feel uncomfortable; this was never my intent.”
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.