The Judicial Inquiry Commission has considered your request for an opinion concerning
whether, under Canon 3C(l)(b) of the Alabama Canons of Judicial Ethics a judge is
disqualified from sitting in a certain proceeding wherein a party is claiming to be a legal
heir to a previously settled estate. Twenty-five years ago when the judge was a young
lawyer, he was appointed and acted as guardian ad litem for minor and unknown heirs
in the 1961 accounting for the estate in question.