Matt Brown wrote:
If arbitrators had to recuse themselves every time someone came before them who they considered a 'known troublemaker', let's say no disruptive user would ever get banned.
There's an informal (formal?) rule that if a majority of arbitrators ever recuse on a case, they all are automatically unrecused. The justification is that, in all probability, a situation that resulted in a user having personal conflicts with nearly every single arbitrator is more likely to be the fault of the user than the fault individually of every arbitrator. A more practical justification is that it serves as a deterrent to trying to "win" a case by forcing everyone to recuse.
-Mark