Cite as: 536 U. S. 765 (2002)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
and the settlement value" of that separate suit. Id., at 824. As in Ward and Tumey, we held, the justice therefore had an interest in the outcome of the decision that unsuited him to participate in the judgment. 475 U. S., at 824. It mattered not whether the justice was actually influenced by this interest; "[t]he Due Process Clause," we observed, "may sometimes bar trial by judges who have no actual bias and who would do their very best to weigh the scales of justice equally between contending parties." Id., at 825 (internal quotation marks omitted).
These cases establish three propositions important to this dispute. First, a litigant is deprived of due process where the judge who hears his case has a "direct, personal, substantial, and pecuniary" interest in ruling against him. Id., at 824 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). Second, this interest need not be as direct as it was in Tumey, where the judge was essentially compensated for each conviction he obtained; the interest may stem, as in Ward, from the judge's knowledge that his success and tenure in office depend on certain outcomes. "[T]he test," we have said, "is whether the . . . situation is one 'which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge [that] might lead him not to hold the balance nice, clear and true.' " Ward, 409 U. S., at 60 (quoting Tumey, 273 U. S., at 532). And third, due process does not require a showing that the judge is actually biased as a result of his self-interest. Rather, our cases have "always endeavored to prevent even the probability of unfairness." In re Murchison, 349 U. S., at 136. "[T]he requirement of due process of law in judicial procedure is not satisfied by the argument that men of the highest honor and the greatest self-sacrifice could carry it on without danger of injustice." Tumey, 273 U. S., at 532.3
3 To avoid the import of our due process decisions, the Court dissects the concept of judicial "impartiality," ante, at 775-779, concluding that only one variant of that concept—lack of prejudice against a party—is secured by the Fourteenth Amendment, ante, at 775-777. Our Due Proc-
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