According to a CNN report, it turns out that U.S. Chief Judge Vaughn Walker, the judge who stayed California's controversial Proposition 8 – the prop that outlawed gay marriage – calling it unconstitutional on the grounds that the proposition made one type of marriage superior to another is gay and happily living in a committed relationship of more than 10 years. The crowd behind Prop 8 is now requesting that the judge's ruling be tossed out on grounds that he did not disclose that he was gay and recuse himself. The judge felt that he did not need to recuse himself and that, "...he didn't think it was appropriate for any judge's sexual orientation, ethnicity, national origin or gender to stop them from presiding over a case, according to a Reuters report."
(source) This brings up an interesting ethical question. Certainly there are grounds for judges to recuse themselves from presiding over cases. The CA for Prop 8 crowd believes that Walker may have had a vested interest in the outcome of the case being that he is gay, and therefore should have recused himself. Yet, take a case where abortion rights are at issue, should there be no female judge allowed to preside as she might have a vested interest? The question of vested interest in an interesting one to consider in the case of a judge. Should a judge who owns a home be able to preside over cases where home ownership is involved? Should judges who have children be able to preside over cases involving children. Should white judges be able to oversee suits against white people? How does one determine true vested interest? The entire US judicial system, in fact, hinges on the notion, rightly or wrongly, that the job of the judge is to comprehend the law, analyze the proceedings, and ensure the law is being followed as the judgement process proceeds. In the case of a civil trial such as the ruling to stay Prop 8, the judge's job is to analyze the law and ascertain its constitutionality. In this case, Chief Judge wrote a 136-page ruling. That's not something he assembled overnight from law book clippings. That's a serious and thoughtful analysis. May he have ruled with bias? That would be the job of another panel of judges to ascertain. If it were found that he did, then re-try the case. What is important to understand is that the implication in the challenge of his ruling is that no one of a certain identifiable group can ever rule fairly in a case involving some aspect of that group. Men cannot rule on cases involving men, women with women, Catholics on Catholics, Californians on Californians, people on people. People accepted the ruling as long as they believed the person ruling was heterosexual? What this really speaks to, yet again, is the tremendous amount of legal prejudice still tolerated in the United States against gay people.