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High Court Pretense, Lower Court Candor: Judicial Impartiality After Capterton V. Massey Coal Co., Lynne H. Rambo
High Court Pretense, Lower Court Candor: Judicial Impartiality After Capterton V. Massey Coal Co., Lynne H. Rambo
Faculty Scholarship
Apolitical, impartial judging has always been our judicial ideal. In the last twenty years, however, special interest groups have sought power over (and through) judges by pouring millions into judicial elections, and the Court has recognized their first amendment right to do so. In the midst of this politicization of judicial elections, the Court five years ago reinforced the impartiality ideal, holding very broadly in Caperton v. Massey Coal Co. that it violates due process for a judge to sit whenever there is a “probability of bias,” i.e., whenever the average judge is unlikely to be neutral. Caperton involved a …
In Defense Of Appearances: What Caperton V. Massey Should Have Said, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
In Defense Of Appearances: What Caperton V. Massey Should Have Said, Jed Handelsman Shugerman
Faculty Scholarship
In June of 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for the first time that an elected judge must recuse himself from a case that involves a major campaign contributor. In Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co., a coal company had been hit with a $50 million jury verdict. While appealing this verdict, the company's CEO, Don Blankenship, spent $3 million to help a challenger, Brent Benjamin, who had no judicial experience, defeat the incumbent, West Virginia Supreme Court Justice Warren McGraw. Blankenship funded political attack ads by a political organization (And for the Sake of the Kids) that …