Cite as: 510 U. S. 540 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
ant, who has been shown to be a thoroughly reprehensible person. But the judge is not thereby recusable for bias or prejudice, since his knowledge and the opinion it produced were properly and necessarily acquired in the course of the proceedings, and are indeed sometimes (as in a bench trial) necessary to completion of the judge's task. As Judge Jerome Frank pithily put it: "Impartiality is not gullibility. Disinterestedness does not mean child-like innocence. If the judge did not form judgments of the actors in those court-house dramas called trials, he could never render decisions." In re J. P. Linahan, Inc., 138 F. 2d 650, 654 (CA2 1943). Also not subject to deprecatory characterization as "bias" or "prejudice" are opinions held by judges as a result of what they learned in earlier proceedings. It has long been regarded as normal and proper for a judge to sit in the same case upon its remand, and to sit in successive trials involving the same defendant.
It is wrong in theory, though it may not be too far off the mark as a practical matter, to suggest, as many opinions have, that "extrajudicial source" is the only basis for establishing disqualifying bias or prejudice. It is the only common basis, but not the exclusive one, since it is not the exclusive reason a predisposition can be wrongful or inappropriate. A favorable or unfavorable predisposition can also deserve to be characterized as "bias" or "prejudice" because, even though it springs from the facts adduced or the events occurring at trial, it is so extreme as to display clear inability to render fair judgment. (That explains what some courts have called the "pervasive bias" exception to the "extrajudicial source" doctrine. See, e. g., Davis v. Board of School Comm'rs of Mobile County, 517 F. 2d 1044, 1051 (CA5 1975), cert. denied, 425 U. S. 944 (1976).)
With this understanding of the "extrajudicial source" limitation in §§ 144 and 455(b)(1), we turn to the question whether it appears in § 455(a) as well. Petitioners' argument for the negative based upon the mere absence of the
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