When should a judge step down from a case due to the appearance of a conflict of interest?  That question animates the work of two American Bar Association ethics committees, who have struggled to develop new judicial conduct rules that implement the Supreme Court’s 2009 decision in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., where the court ruled that due process required a West Virginia supreme court justice to have stepped down from a case in which one party had spent $3 million in support of the justice’s election.  Crafting an appropriate rule, however, has proven difficult.  An article in the January 2013 ABA JOURNAL quotes CCL President Robert S. Peck about the difficulty in making sure the rule captures potential bias in favor of an election supporter or opponent without putting the onus on the judges to discover what is being spent and by whom, especially when state law often prohibits a judge from knowing that information.  Peck’s position was supported by the ABA’s Judicial Division.