The Effect of Per Se Recusal Rules on Donor Behavior in Judicial Elections

Recent judicial decisions and political developments have elevated the issue of impartiality among elected judges as a topic of public and scholarly interest. Using a data set of all donations to candidates for the Supreme Court of Alabama from 1994 through 2010, we explore one potential proposal for limiting the appearance of judicial bias and its effects on the behavior of campaign donors—per se recusal. Our results indicate that the existence of a per se recusal statute significantly decreases the likelihood of observing large donations from several categories of donors. In auxiliary analysis, we find that attorney donors have increasingly funneled contributions through PACs since this statute’s enactment—presumably, because such contributions are exempted from the law.