It can be inferred from the passage that the author would be most likely to consider which one of the following to be...

Emil-Kunkin on November 20, 2023

This is a tough one! The question is asking us why the author dislikes laws that allow parties to move to disqualify the judge.

I missed this the first few times, but we actually have direct support for C. Around line 23, the author is discussing why motions to recuse are weak, and one of the reasons given is that the parties may not be aware of the judge's bias.

That is, if the parties are unaware that the judge is biased, forcing the parties to move to recuse as the only way of getting a recusal will fail to eliminate the bias.

D just doesn't have any support, the passage only mentions professional codes in passing and it doesn't really relate to he reason that the author thinks laws allowing motions to recuse are insufficient.

@MichaelaJ on November 21, 2023

Would line 23 be the part where it discusses focusing on appearances and that focusing on one's appearance may cause the actual bias?

So, essentially this is saying that just because one appears to have a biased opinion doesn't mean they actually do, and having a third party remove that judge because they "seem to appear biased" doesn't actually remove the bias?

Emil-Kunkin on November 23, 2023

Yeah I think that's a big part of it. I think the most important reason why this would be a problem is that if we make litigants responsible for making judges recuse themselves when they appear biased, then we will fail to eliminate bias in the cases where a judge is actually biased but hides it well, so they don't appear biased.

These are the sources of bias that are not apparent to outside observers (or even maybe to judges themselves) that the passage fears would be overlooked.