Cite as: 510 U. S. 540 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
several reasons. First, Grinnell (the only opinion of ours to recite the doctrine) clearly meant by "extrajudicial source" a source outside the judicial proceeding at hand—which would include as extrajudicial sources earlier judicial proceedings conducted by the same judge (as are at issue here).1 Yet many, perhaps most, Courts of Appeals considered knowledge (and the resulting attitudes) that a judge properly acquired in an earlier proceeding not to be "extrajudicial." See, e. g., Lyons v. United States, 325 F. 2d 370, 376 (CA9), cert. denied, 377 U. S. 969 (1964); Craven v. United States, 22 F. 2d 605, 607-608 (CA1 1927). Secondly, the doctrine was often quoted as justifying the refusal to consider trial rulings as the basis for § 144 recusal. See, e. g., Toth v. Trans World Airlines, Inc., 862 F. 2d 1381, 1387-1388 (CA9 1988); Liberty Lobby, Inc. v. Dow Jones & Co., 838 F. 2d 1287, 1301 (CADC), cert. denied, 488 U. S. 825 (1988). But trial rulings have a judicial expression rather than a judicial source. They may well be based upon extrajudicial knowledge or motives. Cf. In re International Business Machines Corp., 618 F. 2d 923, 928, n. 6 (CA2 1980). And finally, even in cases in which the "source" of the bias or prejudice was clearly the proceedings themselves (for example, testimony introduced or an event occurring at trial which produced unsuppressible judicial animosity), the supposed doctrine would not necessarily be applied. See, e. g., Davis v. Board of School Comm'rs of Mobile County, 517 F. 2d 1044, 1051 (CA5 1975) (doctrine has "pervasive bias" exception), cert. denied, 425 U. S. 944 (1976);
1 That is clear when the language from Grinnell excerpted above is expanded to include its entire context: "The alleged bias and prejudice to be disqualifying must stem from an extrajudicial source and result in an opinion on the merits on some basis other than what the judge learned from his participation in the case. Berger v. United States, 255 U. S. 22, 31. Any adverse attitudes that [the district judge in the present case] evinced toward the defendants were based on his study of the depositions and briefs which the parties had requested him to make." 384 U. S., at 583. The cited case, Berger, had found recusal required on the basis of judicial remarks made in an earlier proceeding.
545
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007