The Deja-Vu of Political Impeachment

by

       M. Richard Maxson

      The Constitution grants Supreme Court justices a lifetime appointment if they choose to stay by not specifying a time or age limit of service. The purpose of a lifetime appointment was to give them freedom to make decisions without interference from the executive or legislative branches of government. But the Constitution leaves open the possibility of impeachment and removal by Congress. In U.S. history, one justice was impeached, but not convicted, and one justice resigned under the threat of impeachment. The single justice impeached but subsequently not forced out was Samuel Chase, a longtime Maryland legislator and a signer of the Declaration of Independence who was appointed to the court as an associate justice by President George Washington. A Federalist, Chase irked Thomas Jefferson and his Republican allies in Congress, and was impeached on politically motivated charges of acting in a partisan manner during several trials.

      The Constitution does allow elected or civil officials to be impeached on grounds of “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” But the barriers to actually bringing impeachment charges forward, much less securing a conviction are high. And those barriers came into play in the case of Chase.

      Chase was appointed to the court in 1796 and during his early years as an associate justice developed reputation for open partisanship in favor of the Federalist Party, and specifically the policies of President John Adams. This put Chase in direct opposition to the executive branch after Thomas Jefferson, whose Democratic-Republican party bitterly opposed the Federalists, was elected president in 1800.

      Jefferson already disliked Chase for openly political statements he often made while presiding over lower court cases. (Until the late 1800s, Supreme Court justices also served as lower court judges.) But things worsened after Chase went so far as to open a grand jury charge in a U.S. circuit court that ardently criticized a law passed by the Democratic-Republican-controlled congress. Jefferson seized on those statements as evidence of Chase’s inappropriate political bias and his allies in the House of Representatives agreed. Chase was eventually served with eight articles of impeachment, one related to his grand jury charge and the other seven focused on alleged improper behavior when he resided over in lower court cases.

      In 1804, eight articles of impeachment accused him of allowing his political views to interfere with his decisions. This description of events comes from the U.S. Senate's website: Samuel Chase  had served on the Supreme Court since 1796. A staunch Federalist with a volcanic personality, Chase showed no willingness to tone down his bitter partisan rhetoric after Jeffersonian Republicans gained control of Congress in 1801. Representative John Randolph of Virginia, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson, orchestrated impeachment proceedings against Chase, declaring he would wipe the floor with the obnoxious justice. The House voted to impeach Chase on March 12, 1804, accusing Chase of refusing to dismiss biased jurors and of excluding or limiting defense witnesses in two politically sensitive cases. The trial managers (members of the House of Representatives) hoped to prove that Chase had “behaved in an arbitrary, oppressive, and unjust way by announcing his legal interpretation on the law of treason before defense counsel had been heard.” Highlighting the political nature of this case, the final article of impeachment accused the justice of continually promoting his political agenda on the bench, thereby “tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan.” On March 12, 1804, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Chase by a 73 to 32 margin, naming John Randolph, a cousin of Jefferson and a mercurial politician in his own right, to head the House Managers responsible for the prosecution.

      On November 30, 1804, the Senate appointed a committee to “prepare and report proper rules of proceedings” for the impeachment trial. When they took up the case against the Federalist justice in January 1805, the Senate consisted of 25 Jeffersonian Republicans and nine Federalists. Chase appeared before the members on January 4, 1805, to answer the charges. He declared that he was being tried for his political convictions rather than for any real crime or misdemeanor and requested a one-month postponement to prepare a defense. The Senate agreed and the trial began in earnest on February 4.

      Chase’s defense team, which included several of the nation’s most eminent attorneys, convinced several wavering senators that Chase’s conduct did not warrant his removal from office. Chase was tried in the Senate for 22 days. With at least six Jeffersonian Republicans joining the nine Federalists who voted not guilty on each article, the Senate on March 1, 1805, acquitted Samuel Chase on all counts. A majority voted guilty on three of the eight articles, but on each article the vote fell far short of the two-thirds required for conviction. The Senate thereby effectively insulated the judiciary from further congressional attacks based on disapproval of judges’ opinions. Chase resumed his duties at the bench. He would serve on the Supreme Court for the rest of his life, dying in 1811 after 25 years on the bench.

      President Donald Trump was impeached on December 18th, 2019 for accused crimes of soliciting the aid of a foreign government to gain information on Joe Biden, a political candidate challenging President Trump, and for obstruction of Congress. This impeachment was described by some as the first in which the President was not accused of any specific crime. As with the impeachment of 1805 this action is purely political. The facts will show that the information that the President was seeking was NOT to help him win an election but rather to expose the massive election interference by the Democratic party with the assistance of now removed Ukrainian officials and other foreign governments in the 2016 US election. An ongoing criminal investigation into this matter is being conducted by the Justice Department. Patriotic Americans eagerly await it’s findings.