Federal judges fail to recuse from cases involving universities where they teach: REPORT

Federal judges teaching at prominent universities have repeatedly failed to recuse themselves from cases involving schools where they teach, a new watchdog report reveals.

Fix the Court, a nonprofit organization that advocates for making courts more accountable, published the report on July 31, titled “Conflict U.: Two Dozen Federal Judges Did Not Recuse in Cases Involving the Universities Where They Teach.”

Over the past decade, 24 judges have ruled in over 70 such cases, according to the findings.

The universities include Yale University, Ohio State University, the University of Miami, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Texas at Austin.

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The report, which is intended to be “illustrative,” and not comprehensive, explains that the issue is widespread. 10 out of the 13 circuits appear in its contents.

Many of the examples listed in the report are federal judges who teach at law schools, not recusing themselves in cases involving the parent university.

“This, to me, is a pretty clear appearance-of-impropriety situation,” Gabe Roth, executive director for Fix the Court, told Campus Reform. “If you’re a judge who’s part-time teaching at Ohio State’s law school, a neutral party would likely think you’re at least somewhat biased in favor of the school.” 

“Even if a judge-adjunct professes, as several have, that the law school at which they teach is but ‘one small and virtually autonomous part’ of the university, we believe that a neutral observer who sees, for example, ‘Ohio State Law adjunct’ on a judge’s financial disclosure report would look askance any time the judge presides over a case involving Ohio State,” the report says. 

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The document also highlights conservative-leaning Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett as examples for the proper use of recusals. Examining previous cases, the report says that the two justices “appear to have viewed the parent universities of the law schools at which they formerly taught as conflicts.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being a law school adjunct when you’re a judge,” Roth stated. “I’d simply hope that more judges would take their side job into account when considering their ethical responsibilities (as then-Judges Barrett and Gorsuch seemed to have done).”

Roth also explained possible solutions to the issue, including changes to the U.S. Guide to Judiciary Policy to require recusals in every case involving a parent university and for judges to add universities to their recusal lists regardless.

“[A]t the very least, judges should disclose on the docket of any university case they’re handling that they teach at that university’s law school, and then ask the parties to state if they have any objection to the judge continuing on, or if they believe he or she should recuse,” he concluded.

Left-leaning judges named in the report include the following: