This is not an abstract concern: I was a co-author of a Brookings Institution report concluding that conflicts of interest, and the appearance of such conflicts, would be pervasive in cases arising from the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

The Supreme Court may have to consider questions about whether a sitting president can be indicted or subpoenaed, and what effect pardoning a federal offense would have on state charges for the same conduct — an issue bound up in Gamble v. United States, a double jeopardy case already on the court’s calendar. Many have argued that Judge Kavanaugh should not be confirmed unless he commits in advance to recusing himself from such cases. He has predictably refused to do so.

The accusations made by Christine Blasey Ford raise another order of concern. Some might argue that the unresolved cloud over his past would require a Justice Kavanaugh to recuse himself from any case involving sexual assault or harassment. That might well be, but I have in mind something more sweeping and fundamental.

To be sure, the rules of recusal that bind lower federal court judges do not technically apply to Supreme Court justices — at least according to the self-interested interpretation of the justices themselves. But those rules are not the only source of legal principles requiring all judges, of whatever court, to step aside when the institutional integrity of the judicial process is incompatible with their participation.

Apart from formally promulgated codes of judicial conduct, the Supreme Court has recognized that those whom our legal system entrusts to resolve controversies among litigants have a constitutional duty to step aside whenever a conflict of interest — or the public appearance of such a conflict — is so powerful as to erode public trust in the fair and impartial administration of justice.