Cite as: 510 U. S. 540 (1994)
Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment
Justice Kennedy, with whom Justice Blackmun, Justice Stevens, and Justice Souter join, concurring in the judgment.
The Court's ultimate holding that petitioners did not assert sufficient grounds to disqualify the District Judge is un-exceptionable. Nevertheless, I confine my concurrence to the judgment, for the Court's opinion announces a mistaken, unfortunate precedent in two respects. First, it accords nearly dispositive weight to the source of a judge's alleged partiality, to the point of stating that disqualification for intrajudicial partiality is not required unless it would make a fair hearing impossible. Second, the Court weakens the principal disqualification statute in the federal system, 28 U. S. C. § 455, by holding—contrary to our most recent interpretation of the statute in Liljeberg v. Health Services Acquisition Corp., 486 U. S. 847 (1988)—that the broad protections afforded by subsection (a) are qualified by limitations explicit in the specific prohibitions of subsection (b).
I
We took this case to decide whether the reach of § 455(a) is limited by the so-called extrajudicial source rule. I agree with the Court insofar as it recognizes that there is no per se rule requiring that the alleged partiality arise from an extrajudicial source. In my view, however, the Court places undue emphasis upon the source of the challenged mindset in determining whether disqualification is mandated by § 455(a).
A
Section 455(a) provides that a judge "shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." For present purposes, it should suffice to say that § 455(a) is triggered by an attitude or state of mind so resistant to fair and dispassionate inquiry as to cause a party, the public, or a reviewing court to have reasonable grounds to question the neutral and objective character of a
557
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