Judges Commons^™

The Failure Of Judicial Recusal And Disclosure Rules: Evidence From A Field Experiment, Dane Thorley

Northwestern University Law Review

U.S. courts rely predominately on judicial self-recusal and in-court disclosure to address judicial conflicts of interest and maintain a critical perception of impartiality. But these approaches fail to account for the legal, institutional, and social dynamics that surround the relationship between judges, attorneys, and the adjudicative process. In reality, judges rarely use their discretion to disclose conflicts or recuse themselves, and attorneys do not ask them to do so. If we understand both the legal and extralegal incentives at play in these decisions, none of these outcomes should be surprising. The shortcomings of recusal and disclosure rules are particularly salient …