Please Recuse Yourself: A Field Experiment Exploring the Relationship between Campaign Donations and Judicial Recusal

In this paper we present the preliminary results of a field experiment that explores one aspect of the relationship between campaign donations and judicial behavior — the propensity and motivation behind judicial recusals. We are able to identify civil cases where one or more of the attorneys involved made financial contributions to the judge’s previous election campaign. A random selection of judges presiding over cases that match these criteria received letters identifying the potential conflict and requesting recusal. We measure the rate of judicial recusal, in addition to a number of secondary outcomes. We find that sending judges letters has a moderate, albeit non-statistically significant, effect on recusals but leads to a 22 percentage point increase in the likelihood that a judge will disclose the donation on the court record. This study provides novel insight into the impartiality of the judicial system and the sensitivity of elected judges to appearance of conflict-of-interest.