SAN FRANCISCO — As news of Judge Alex Kozinski's swift retirement in the face of sexual harassment allegations emerged Monday morning, talk quickly turned to what his decision to step down will mean for the Ninth Circuit and the larger legal community.

One thing seemed readily apparent: Kozinski's move mooted the formal disciplinary proceedings set into motion last week when Ninth Circuit chief Judge issued an order Dec. 14. Chief Justice John Roberts had referred that matter out to the Second Circuit for an inquiry headed up by Second Circuit Chief Judge Robert Katzmann.

Arthur Hellman, an expert on the Ninth Circuit and the federal judiciary at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said Monday morning that since Kozinski had resigned, the statute that lays out that disciplinary framework for federal judges no longer applies to him. The special committee that was set to investigate Kozinski can't impose any kind of discipline on him now that he's left the judiciary.

But the episode has still sparked a conversation about the lack of recourse for clerks and court employees who are mistreated by life-tenured judges.

Stanford Law professor Deborah Rhode said that she thinks there isn't much value in wasting judicial resources and taxpayers' money with the inquiry now that Kozinski is gone anyway. Rhode said that Kozinski's initial comments in the wake of the first wave of accusations were a disgrace and she's glad that he's no longer on the court. (Kozinski told the LA Times “If this is all they are able to dredge up after 35 years, I am not too worried,” in the wake of the initial Washington Post report.)

Rhode is among a group of 11 scholars who wrote a Dec. 14 letter to Roberts asking him to use his annual year-end report to commit to hearing the complaints of those who come forward with sexual harassment complaints involving the federal judiciary.

“Given the sexual harassment allegations that have recently surfaced, we think you should take the opportunity in this year's report to assure those considering coming forward with complaints about members of the judiciary that they will be heard and that justice will be done,” the scholars wrote.

Professor Charles Geyh, an expert on the federal judiciary at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, likewise said that he hopes the federal judiciary takes this episode as a “wake-up call” to revisit its own internal guidelines about how and when judicial clerks and employees are obliged to confidentiality. Geyh pointed in particular to the case Heidi Bond, one of the women named in the initial Washington Post story about Kozinski, who seemed to be faced with a catch-22 when asking for another judge's advice about an instance where Kozinski called her into his chambers to view a pornographic image on his computer.

“I think it's clear there needs to be some clarification for the benefit of staff that they can report and should report misconduct,” Geyh said.

Catherine Crump, an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law who wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post about how clerkships can be both “a gateway to membership in the profession's elite” and “the perfect setup for abusive relationships,” agreed with Geyh.

Crump said in a phone interview Monday that she was motivated to write the column because she felt a sense of responsibility to her students at the law school to shine a light on the power imbalance of the judge-clerk relationship. A former Ninth Circuit clerk herself for Judge M. Margaret McKeown, Crump added that her own judge's behavior toward clerks during her tenure was “exemplary” but that she had plenty of colleagues and students who had experienced “more mundane examples of judicial misconduct.”

“The judiciary should try to do more rigorous thinking about how to make a work environment available to clerks so that when they believe they're being abused they have someplace to go,” Crump said.

“It's to everyone's benefit that Kozinski resigns,” Crump added. “Although I do find it ironic that someone whose behavior to women has been so egregious is likely to be replaced by someone selected by President Trump.”

The Ninth Circuit After Kozinski

Kozinski leaves the court with a full docket of cases that will have to be dealt with in his absence. Court rules state: “If a member of a three-judge panel becomes unavailable by reason of death, disability, recusal or departure from the court and the case is under submission, the clerk shall draw a replacement as needed, utilizing a list of active judges randomly drawn by lot.”

The rules leave open the possibility that the remaining two judges on any of Kozinski's pending cases could decide any case where they agree on the outcome. But court observers note that the court is more likely to have the clerk draw a third judge in most instances, especially in high-profile cases like the climate change case Kozinski heard alongside Chief Judge Sidney Thomas and Judge Marsha Berzon just last week.

Kozinski's departure leaves five current vacancies on the Ninth Circuit with a sixth set to come next year when N. Randy Smith, a George W. Bush appointee from Idaho, is set to retire. Trump has only made one Ninth Circuit nomination so far: He tapped federal prosecutor Ryan Bounds in September to fill the seat previously held by Diarmuid O'Scannlain.

Thus far, however, Oregon's two Democratic U.S. senators have declined to sign off on Bounds' nomination claiming that the Trump administration bypassed the recommendations of the senators' home-state screening committee. Republican Sen. Charles Grassley, the chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, so far hasn't moved forward with any plans for a hearing on Bounds' nomination. Trump hasn't put any names forward for the other open seats in Arizona, Hawaii and California.

Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law and expert on federal judicial selection, said that California's Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary, “seems to be sticking to her guns” that U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California should fill the seat vacated when Circuit Judge Harry Pregerson went senior in late 2015. Koh, an Obama appointee, was voted out of committee last year, but never received a vote from the full Senate.

“I'm dubious that Kozinski's seat will be filled before the [2018 midterm] election. I think they'd have to really move and they haven't even moved on the other” open Ninth Circuit seats, Tobias said. “The question is: Does Trump really want to have a big blowout with Feinstein over those [California] vacancies?”