Supreme Court considers campaign contributions to judges

The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear a landmark case over whether state judges must recuse themselves from cases involving those who have made large contributions to their campaigns. A group of 27 former chief justices and justices of state supreme courts is urging the high court to rule that judges must recuse themselves in such cases.

The case involves a lawsuit in West Virginia, where a large energy company lost a $50 million fraud judgment. After the verdict was handed down but before the appeals court could hear the case, the owner of the energy company donated $3 million to the campaign of a candidate for the same court that heard the appeal. The judge refused to recuse himself from the case and he cast the deciding vote as the appeals court reversed the jury award from the lower court.

The original plaintiff in that suit is now asking the Supreme Court to rule that state judges must recuse themselves and not participate in cases where one of the parties has been a major contributor, arguing that a failure to do so violates the right to due process and a fair trial.

The group of 27 former state supreme court justices, including former Michigan Chief Justice Conrad
L. Mallett, has filed an amicus brief in the case that argues that “the only way to preserve a litigant’s due process right to adjudication before an impartial judge is to require that a judge recuse from a case not only when the judge consciously perceives the judge’s own partiality, but also when there exists a reasonable appearance of partiality or impropriety.”

In September, we reported on two studies of two state supreme courts that concluded that judges who had received significant campaign contributions from a party to a suit before their court were far more likely to vote for the contributor.