Howard Berman: “the Committee on Rules denied me and the rule denied me the opportunity to offer a variation of this amendment in…”

“the Committee on Rules denied me and the rule denied me the opportunity to offer a variation of this amendment in committee, even though they allowed one other nongermane amendment, which we just adopted. This amendment, I believe, addresses a serious problem in the current structure of the Federal procedures. If an outside party complains that a Federal judge has engaged in misconduct, that party has a right to have the presiding judge entertain his complaint. If it is the district court, it is the chief judge of the district that that judge sits in; if it is the appellate court, it is the presiding judge of the circuit; and if it is the Supreme Court, it is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. If the presiding judge or the chief judge does not resolve that, the complainant is entitled to a three-judge panel. That is for misconduct. But for recusals based on an apparent conflict of interest, asking a judge to step aside and not hear a particular case, there is absolutely no process other than the judge himself who is being alleged to have not been appropriately sitting on that case because of conflicts of interest or apparent conflicts of interest; that judge gets to decide for himself. That system is not right.”