The chief judge of the San Francisco federal appeals court, who was presiding over an obscenity trial when pornographic material on his website was made public, invited an ethics panel to investigate his own conduct, declaring he would fully cooperate in any investigation.

According to the Associated Press, Alex Kozinski, the chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, requested Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to assign the investigation to a panel of judges outside the 9th Circuit's jurisdiction of nine western states.

When the material on his website was made public by the Los Angeles Times, Kozinsky was presiding over the obscenity trial of Ira Isaacs, who is charged with obscenity for selling sexual fetish videos depicting bestiality and defecation. The trial was suspended on Wednesday, shortly after the discovery was made. The newspaper also informed that Kozinski blocked access to the website after he was asked about the issue Tuesday evening.

In his defense, the judge told the newspaper he had no idea the website was available to the public. He also said that, even though some of the material was inappropriate, he considered most of the videos funny, rather than obscene. Eventually, he declared in an email to the legal Web site http://abovethelaw.com  he didn’t even remember posting some of the material on the site, suggesting that his son, Yale, may have been responsible.

Yale Kozinski told the New York Times that the site was registered to him and he was the one who maintained it, but he also said it was possible for friends or family to post material on it.

One video on Kozinski’s website showed a half-naked man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal, while other images showed nude women on all fours painted to look like cows and masturbation scenes.

Kozinski, who was appointed by Ronals Reagan to the federal bench in 1985, is known for being a libertarian and a defender of the 1^st Amendment Right to freedom of speech and expression. Some years ago, the open-minded judge fought against the move initiated by court administrators, who had placed filters on computers blocking access to pornographic sites and other such materials.