Court Opinion

ID: 9709751
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 03:54:09.059204+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:51.237670
License: Public Domain

SHIRLEY S. ABRAHAMSON, J.
{.concurring). I agree with the majority opinion's conclusion that the circuit court judge in this case was not required to disqualify himself under Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(a) (1993-94). I also agree with the majority opinion's conclusion that the circuit court judge made the requisite subjective determination regarding his ability to proceed with the case pursuant to Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g).1
*666But the court's analysis should not stop there, any more than does Wisconsin's judicial disqualification statute. As I read it, Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g) also requires an objective assessment of whether or not it appears that a challenged judge can act in an impartial manner. The objective test prescribed by § 757.19(2)(g) requires a reviewing court to assess whether a reasonable, well-informed observer familiar with judicial ethical standards, the judicial system, and the facts and circumstances of the case would harbor reasonable doubts about a judge's ability to be impartial under the circumstances.
While an assessment of whether a judge appears partial might initially seem to be open-ended, this objective test, properly understood and applied, does not give litigants license to ferret out anything which might appear suspicious and use it as a basis for demanding a judge's disqualification. Instead the objective test commands that a reviewing court make a reasonable assessment of the risk that a judge, despite the very best of intentions, might not be capable of holding "the balance nice, clear and true" under the facts and circumstances. Aetna Life Ins. v. LaVoie, 475 U.S. 813, 825 (1986) (quoting Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 532 (1927)).
My conclusion that Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g) incorporates an objective test rests on four grounds. First, notwithstanding the majority opinion's conclusory assertion that the statute is "clearly drafted so as to place the determination of partiality solely upon the judge," Majority op. at 664, the plain language of the statute demonstrates that the legislature intended to promulgate an objective test. By its plain language and *667grammatical structure, the statute requires a judge's disqualification either when a judge determines or when it appears that he or she cannot act in an impartial manner.
Second, the court's own precedent requires an objective test. When the court first had occasion to interpret Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g), it made clear that the statute required an objective as well as a subjective test. State v. Walberg, 109 Wis. 2d 96, 325 N.W.2d 687 (1982), rev'd on other grounds, 766 F.2d 1071 (1985). In determining whether a judgment of the court should be vacated on the grounds of judicial disqualification, the Walberg court examined the Wisconsin Code of Judicial Ethics, SCR 60.01(3),2 as well as Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g). The court concluded that both the Code and the statute required "[a] subjective test based on the judge's own determination of his or her impartiality and an objective test based on whether impartiality can reasonably be questioned." Walberg, 109 Wis. 2d at 106; see id. at 106 n.13.3
In the subsequent case of State v. American TV & Appliance, 151 Wis. 2d 175, 182, 443 N.W.2d 662 (1989), the court mistakenly failed to follow the precedent it had established in Walberg and thereby failed to abide by the doctrine of stare decisis. The doctrine of stare decisis requires courts to " 'stand by things decided'" and is "fundamental to 'a society governed by *668the rule of law'.... A court's decision to depart from precedent is not to be made casually. It must be explained carefully and fully to insure that the court is not acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner." State v. Stevens, 181 Wis. 2d 410, 441-42, 511 N.W.2d 591 (1994), cert. denied, 113 S. Ct. 2245 (1995) (Abrahamson, J., concurring) (citation omitted). Changing the law is justified only when "precedent has become detrimental to coherence and consistency in the law." Id. at 442.
Without explanation, the American TV court stated that "[t]he Code of Judicial Ethics governs the ethical conduct of judges; it has no effect on their legal qualification or disqualification to act and a judge may be disciplined for conduct that would not have required disqualification under sec. 757.19, Stats." American TV, 151 Wis. 2d at 185.4 But while the American TV court declined to explain its departure from precedent, there is ample reason to depart from American TV. By eliminating the objective standard from Wis. Stat. *669§ 757.19(2)(g) while reaffirming the importance of that standard in Wisconsin's Code of Judicial Ethics, American TV created an unnecessary conflict between how judges' appearance of partiality should be assessed, respectively, tinder the disqualification statute and the Code. As the court of appeals observed shortly after American TV was decided, the "supreme court has decided that even when a judge commits ethical violations by presiding over a case, his actions do not constitute grounds for recusal." State v. Carivou, 154 Wis. 2d 641, 644, 454 N.W.2d 562 (Ct. App. 1990).
Third, a judge's subjective assessment of whether he or she should be disqualified is not subject to meaningful appellate review. The majority opinion acknowledges that review of a judge's subjective determination is "limited to establishing whether the judge made a determination requiring disqualification." Majority op. at 663-64, (quoting American TV, 151 Wis. 2d at 186). Under this standard a reviewing court has little choice but to confer its imprimatur on a challenged judge's decision to hear a case.5
*670Fourth, an objective test promotes confidence in the integrity of the judicial system. As the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States House of Representatives stated in explaining the 1974 revisions to the federal disqualification statute, the addition of an objective standard was "designed to promote public confidence in the impartiality of the judicial process by saying, in effect, if there is a reasonable factual basis for doubting the judge's impartiality, he should disqualify himself and let another judge preside over the case."6
Promoting "a government of law and not of men," SCR 60.01(1), Wisconsin's Code of Judicial Ethics requires that judges place the duty to be impartial "above all" other duties. SCR 60.01(3). Because the *671duty of impartiality is paramount, "the Code measures judicial conduct by an objective standard ... in the provision that a judge should administer the law free of 'the appearance of partiality,'" American TV, 151 Wis. 2d at 185.
Finally, I conclude that apart from Wis. Stat. § 757.19 and the Wisconsin Code of Judicial Ethics, an objective test is required by the due process guarantees of the federal and state constitutions. The United States Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that the due process guarantees inscribed in the federal Constitution require application of an objective test to determine whether a judge should have been disqualified from hearing a case. The Court has stated that "[t]he Due Process Clause 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. But to perform its high fimction in the best way, justice must satisfy the appearance of justice." LaVoie, 475 U.S. at 825 (1986) (quoting In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136 (1955)).7
*672Because I believe that a reasonable, well-informed observer of the judicial system would conclude that the circuit court judge in this case was not partial and that there was no appearance of partiality, I concur in the decision reached by the majority. But because I also believe that Wisconsin's disqualification statute, the Code of Judicial Ethics, prior decisions of this court, federal constitutional law and the integrity of the judicial system require the application of an objective test, I would have arrived at that decision differently. I agree with Chief Justice Rehnquist that "just as Clemenceau counseled that war was too important a matter to be left to the generals, so judicial disqualification is too important a matter to be left entirely to the judges."8

 Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2) provides:
Any judge shall disqualify himself or herself from any civil or criminal action or proceeding when one of the following situations occurs:
(a) When a judge is related to any party or counsel thereto or their spouses within the 3rd degree of kinship.
(g) When a judge determines that, for any reason, he or she cannot, or it appears he or she cannot, act in an impartial manner.
*666All future statutory references are to the 1993-94 volume of the Wisconsin Statutes.

SCR 60.01(3) provides, in pertinent part, that "[a] judge should administer the law free of partiality and the appearance of partiality."

 The court drew support for its position from its prior decision in State v. Asfoor, 75 Wis. 2d 411, 436, 249 N.W.2d 529 (1977), in which the court had determined that the Code of Judicial Ethics required a judge to recuse himself or herself whenever there was any appearance of partiality.

 The American TV court tried to circumvent the Walberg court's explicit conclusion that Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g) required both an objective and subjective test by claiming that Walberg was relying on the Code of Judicial Ethics rather than the statute. American TV, 151 Wis. 2d at 185. Even assuming arguendo that this assessment of the Walberg decision is correct, it is immaterial. The Walberg court stated explicitly that an objective test was required under Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g). As the court has previously stated, "when a court of last resort intentionally takes up, discusses, and decides a question germane to, though not necessarily decisive of, the controversy, such decision is not a dictum but is a judicial act of the court which it will thereafter recognize as a binding decision." State v. Kruse, 101 Wis. 2d 387, 392, 305 N.W.2d 85 (1981) (quoting Chase v. American Cartage, 176 Wis. 235, 238, 186 N.W. 598 (1922)).

 See Note, Disqualification of Judges and Justices in the Federal Courts, 86 Harv. L. Rev. 736, 741 (1973), which criticized a similarly subjective standard in an earlier version of the federal disqualification statute, 28 U.S.C. § 455 (1970), noting that "[Reviewing courts can of course be of little assistance in either defining the elements of impropriety or enforcing any such standards once formulated, since the statute requires a judge to avoid participation only when it is improper 'in his opinion.'"
Congress amended the statute in 1974 so that it would conform to revisions in the Code of Judicial Conduct enacted in 1972. One of those revisions, incorporating Canon 3C of the revised Code, requires a judge's disqualification in any proceeding in which a judge's "impartiality might reasonably be questioned." Compare 28 U.S.C. § 455 (1970) with 28 U.S.C. *670§ 455 (1993). See also H.R. Rep. No. 1453, 93d. Cong., 2d Sess., pt. 3 (1974) (discussing P.L. 93-512, which revised 28 U.S.C. § 455); Karen Nelson Moore, Appellate Review of Judicial Disqualification Decisions in the Federal Courts, 35 Hastings L. J. 829, 832-35 (1984) (discussing legislative history of 28 U.S.C. § 455); Note, Disqualification of Federal Judges, supra, at 238-42, 246-59 (discussing legislative history of 28 U.S.C. § 455).

H.R. Rep. No. 1453, 93d Cong., 2d Sess., pt.3, at 6355 (1974). Members of the subcommittee of the Judicial Council charged with the revision of Wisconsin's disqualification procedures which resulted in Wis. Stat. § 757.19 were mailed a copy of the law amending 28 U.S.C. § 455 in July 1975. The text of what is now Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g) was approved at the Judicial Council meeting on December 19, 1975. See Minutes of the Judicial Council meeting of 12/19/75 at 4; Letter from Judicial Council executive secretary Richard R. Malmgren to members of the New Civil Rules Committee of 7/18/75. Hence the drafters of Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g) were aware that an objective test had recently been incorporated in the federal disqualification statute, bolstering the inference that Wis. Stat. § 757.19(2)(g) also requires an objective test.

 As the LaVoie Court observed, not all matters that might require judicial disqualification under federal or state statutory standards would necessarily give rise to constitutional questions warranting disqualification under the due process clause. LaVoie, 475 U.S. at 820; see also Walberg, 109 Wis. 2d 96, 111 & n.19 (distinguishing appearances of partiality sufficient to warrant disqualification under, respectively, a statutory provision and a constitutional provision); Note, Disqualification of Federal Judges for Bias or Prejudice, 46 U. Chi. L. Rev. (1978) 236, 237 n.6 (federal constitutional standard for judicial disqualification not well defined by federal courts because federal statutes establish a more stringent standard than the Constitution demands).

 William H. Rehnquist, Sense and Nonsense About Judicial Ethics, 28 Rec. Ass'n of the Bar, N.Y.C., 694, 695-96 (1973).