Opinion of the Court
Elected State Judges Must Recuse Themselves From Cases Involving the Financial Interests of Major Campaign Donors
In all the circumstances of this case, due process requires recusal. The Due Process Clause incorporated the common-law rule requiring recusal when a judge has "a direct, personal, substantial, pecuniary interest" in a case, Tumey v. Ohio (1927), but this Court has also identified additional instances which, as an objective matter, require recusal where "the probability of actual bias on the part of the judge or decisionmaker is too high to be constitutionally tolerable." — Withrow v. Larkin (1975). Two such instances place the present case in proper context. The first involved local tribunals in which a judge had a…
