GLOBAL (CONT)

judge. A judge shall not testify voluntarily as a character witness.

CANON 4

Conducting the Judge's Extra-Judicial Activities to Minimize the Risk of Conflict with Judicial Obligations

A. Extra-Judicial Activities in General. A judge shall conduct all of the judge's extra-judicial activities so that they do not:

(1) cast reasonable doubt on the judge's capacity to act impartially as a judge

For those too obtuse to comprehend guidelines, 28 USC 455 of federal law clarifies matters:

  1. Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

    (b) He shall also disqualify himself in the following circumstances:

    (1) Where he has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party, or personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding …


And then there is the 1994 case of Liteky v. United States, in which the Supreme Court ruling noted:

Subsection (a), the provision at issue here, was an entirely new "catch-all" recusal provision, covering both "interest or relationship" and "bias or prejudice" grounds, see Liljeberg v. Health Services Acquisition Corp., 486 U.S. 847 (1988) - but requiring them all to be evaluated on an objective basis, so that what matters is not the reality of bias or prejudice, but its appearance. Quite simply and quite universally, recusal was required whenever "impartiality might reasonably be questioned."

Writing those words for the majority in that case was … Antonin Scalia.

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