Cite as: 510 U. S. 540 (1994)
Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment
somewhat short of the mark. This, I submit, is due to the fact that the doctrine crept into the jurisprudence more by accident than design.
The term "extrajudicial source," though not the interpretive doctrine bearing its name, has appeared in only one of our previous cases: United States v. Grinnell Corp., 384 U. S. 563 (1966). Respondents in Grinnell alleged that the trial judge had a personal bias against them, and sought his disqualification and a new trial under 28 U. S. C. § 144. That statute, like § 455(b)(1), requires disqualification for "bias or prejudice." In denying respondents' claim, the Court stated that "[t]he 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." 384 U. S., at 583.
Although Grinnell's articulation of the extrajudicial source rule has a categorical aspect about it, the decision, on closer examination, proves not to erect a per se barrier. After reciting what appeared to be an absolute rule, the Court proceeded to make a few additional points: that certain in-court statements by the judge "reflected no more than his view that, if the facts were as the Government alleged, stringent relief was called for"; that during the trial the judge "repeatedly stated that he had not made up his mind on the merits"; and that another of the judge's challenged statements did not "manifes[t] a closed mind on the merits of the case," but rather was "a terse way" of reiterating a prior ruling. Ibid. Had we meant the extrajudicial source doctrine to be dispositive under § 144, those further remarks would have been unnecessary.
More to the point, Grinnell provides little justification for its announcement of the extrajudicial source rule, relying only upon a citation to Berger v. United States, 255 U. S. 22, 31 (1921). The cited passage from Berger, it turns out, does not bear the weight Grinnell places on it, but stands for the more limited proposition that the alleged bias "must be
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