Art. 4861.Recusal of Judges

Article 4861 opens Chapter 3 by carrying Louisiana's general recusal standard down into the trial courts of limited jurisdiction — parish courts, city courts, and justice of the peace courts, the tier of courts below the state's district courts. A parish or city court judge, or a justice of the peace, may step aside from a case, or be forced to step aside, for the same reasons and on the same grounds that apply to a district court judge under Article 151.

Rather than writing a separate list of disqualifying circumstances for these smaller courts, Article 4861 borrows the one Louisiana already uses elsewhere — grounds tied to things like a financial stake in the outcome, a family or professional relationship with a party or counsel, prior involvement in the matter as an attorney, or an inability to be impartial. A parish, city, or justice of the peace judge is measured against that same standard.

The article addresses only who may be recused and on what grounds. The mechanics — how a recusal motion gets filed and decided, and how a replacement judge takes over — are worked out in the articles that follow, culminating in the appointment of a judge ad hoc, a substitute judge brought in to hear the case in the recused judge's place.