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Thursday, July 14, 2016

The Impeachment of Associate Justice Samuel Chase

"Chase openly campaigned for the reelection of John Adams in 1800, and when the presidential election was thrown into the House of Representatives, he prevailed upon members of Congress to vote against Jefferson. After Chase used a grand jury charge to denounce Republicans for the repeal of the Judiciary Act of 1801, Jefferson suggested that Congress consider impeachment. The House of Representatives impeached Chase in March 1804, citing the partisan grand jury charge, Chase’s conduct in the trials of Fries and Callender, and his actions in Delaware when he “did descend from the dignity of a judge and stoop to the level of an informer.”
The only Supreme Court justice to be impeached, Chase was acquitted in the Senate trial. The closely watched proceedings, however, marked the end of such openly partisan behavior on the part of federal judges as well as the end of the brief Republican effort to remove unsympathetic judges." (emphasis added)
The Sedition Act Trials—Historical Background and Documents: Biographies: Samuel Chase (1741-1811), History of the Federal Judiciary

Seth



Twitter: https://twitter.com/SethBTillman (@SethBTillman)

My prior post: Seth Barrett Tillman, The Code of Conduct for United States Judges does not apply to U.S. Supreme Court Justices -- why?, The New Reform Club (July 13, 2016, 3:01 PM).

Tillman’s Ginsburg-related tweets:




3 comments:

Unknown said...

Republican? GOP-Republican? In 1801? Really?

ThatMikeSmith said...

Whig != GOP

http://ssrn.com/author=345891 said...


The Republican a/k/a Democratic-Republican Party was Jefferson's and Madison's party. It became the modern Democratic party.

The modern Republican party was organized in the 1850s after the Whig party, the traditional opposition party to the Democratic party, imploded. The Republican's first presidential candidate was Fremont in the 1856 election (later a Union general during the Great Rebellion). That's why Lincoln moved seemlessly from the Whig party to the (modern) Republican party.

President Johnson: "Treason must be made infamous and traitors impoverished." Better days.

Seth