A Supreme Court case decided over a decade ago may come back to haunt Judge Amy Coney Barrett

[alwaysinasnit]

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/10/a-supreme-court-case-decided-over-a-decade-ago-may-come-back-to-haunt-judge-amy-coney-barrett/

A Supreme Court case that was decided over a decade ago may come back to haunt Judge Amy Coney Barrett as America enters an impending post-election 2020 judicial nightmare; one in which the sitting president may deny a peaceful transfer of power.

Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. was argued in 2009 with the primary holding that a judge cannot hear a case that centers on the financial interests of someone who supported him substantially in his campaign for election. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority that “recusal may be constitutionally required even where a judge is not actually biased, if there is a ‘serious risk’ of actual bias.”

Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the majority for constitutionalizing the judge’s recusal decision “in a manner ungoverned by any discernable rule,” but wrote that “in the best of all possible worlds, [judges should] sometimes recuse [themselves] even where the clear commands” of the Constitution don’t require it.

“The question for Barrett, if it arises, will not be whether she personally believes she can be fair in deciding an election case but, rather, whether a reasonable person would conclude that her impartiality would be inescapably overborne by the flood of influences brought to bear on her,” wrote former U.S. Court of Appeals Judge J. Michael Luttig in a column for the Washington Post.

snip...

[Hekate]

1. I am a "reasonable person," & I definitely conclude her impartiality would be questionable. nt

[BigmanPigman]

2. Lawrence Tribe said she must recuse but sites a different source...

A great conservative jurist, former CA4 Judge Michael Luttig, convincingly explains why a 2009 SCOTUS decision means Justice #AmyConeyBarrett must recuse from any case that could decide the election. If she doesn’t, expect a devastating political backlash.
https://t.co/9D8UFs0Ijd

Link to tweet

?s=20

[alwaysinasnit]

3. I hadn't seen that. Thanks for sharing!

[BigmanPigman]

4. I sincerely doubt she will recuse herself. This is a SCOTUS/GOP sham.

[alwaysinasnit]

5. +1000

[enough]

6. They'll simply say that the decision applies to judges, but not to Justices.

They don’t recognize any obligation to recuse in SCOTUS.

[FBaggins]

7. The problem is that the example is a judge who ran for reelection

Such judges usually have to run again and you could reasonably assume that they'll need to raise more money and might be biased toward those who donated large amounts previously.

That's substantively different from saying that a judge can't be impartial in cases involving the executive that appointed them. Once a justice is on the bench, that person no longer has any power over them. That's one of the reasons that the founders made these seats lifetime appointments.

Not only would there be FAR more recusals, but history doesn't indicate that it's a problem. Lots of judges have ruled against the people who appointed them.