This term, largely because of the bang-up way it ended, has seen the beginnings of right-wing resentment against Chief Justice John Roberts. There is even an "impeach Roberts" meme bubbling about in some quarters!
It will go nowhere, unless some extra-judicial scandal is brewing I haven't heard about, but it is an intriguing symptom.
In the Warren Court era, there were "Impeach Earl Warren" bumper stickers and billboards apenty. Never got traction.
There was also a push to impeach Justice Douglas, who was a good bit to the left of Warren by anyone's metric, and that did get a little traction.
That arose from Douglas extra-judicial activities. He wrote an artticle for "Avant Garde," a magazine published by Ralph Ginzburg, at a time when litigation concerning alleged libel by Ginzberg, litigation that had constitutional significance and would eventually reach SCOTUS, was underway in the federal courts.
The content of the actual article by Douglas was uncontroversial. It involved folk singing of all things. But Ginzberg was a specialist in both smut and scandal and even aside from the potential conflict, it was boundary-pressing behavior for a SCOTUS justice to associate himself with this.
(Douglas' payment for that musicological article? -- $350.)
Rep. Gerald Ford sought to have Douglas impeached largely on this ground, while also asserting that he, Ford, would never do something like this on the basis of any judge's "political philosophy or the legal opinions which he contributes to the decisions of the courts."
The Ford presidential library has Ford's big speech on the subject here.
http://www.ford.utexas.edu/library/speeches/700415b.htm
Anyway, Ford got nowhere.
Scandal can keep some one off the court. But scandal only very rarely allows for anyone to be knocked off the court. A rare counterexample -- also from the Warren Court era -- was Justice Abe Fortas. That also involved some extra-judicial activities, legal work that Fortas was doing for a Wall Street wheeler-dealer, Louis Wolfson, that may have included asking the president for a pardon for Wolfson in connection with securities fraud charges.
Yet even in Fortas' case, the Wolfson matter would probably not have threatened his tenure as an associate justice except that he over-reached and sought to become the next chief justice. LBJ nominated Fortas for Chief when Earl Warren indicated his interest in stepping down. Republicans naturally wanted to let the next President -- whom they hoped would be Nixon, not Humphrey -- decide on the next Chief Justice, so they made a fight of this. The Wolfson business came out in the course of that fight, and it not only kept Fortas out of the CJ seat, it led to pressure that caused his resignation from the AJ seat as well.
The point?
Justices are very seldom impeached or pressured off the bench in any case. In the rarte exceptional case, it is something they've done 'on the side' that causes the trouble, not as Rep. Ford put it "the legal opinions which he contributes to the decisions of the courts," however misguided.
But hey, if you wanna try, try. There are worse things you could be doing with your time. There just aren't any less fruitful things you could be doing.
It will go nowhere, unless some extra-judicial scandal is brewing I haven't heard about, but it is an intriguing symptom.
In the Warren Court era, there were "Impeach Earl Warren" bumper stickers and billboards apenty. Never got traction.
There was also a push to impeach Justice Douglas, who was a good bit to the left of Warren by anyone's metric, and that did get a little traction.
That arose from Douglas extra-judicial activities. He wrote an artticle for "Avant Garde," a magazine published by Ralph Ginzburg, at a time when litigation concerning alleged libel by Ginzberg, litigation that had constitutional significance and would eventually reach SCOTUS, was underway in the federal courts.
The content of the actual article by Douglas was uncontroversial. It involved folk singing of all things. But Ginzberg was a specialist in both smut and scandal and even aside from the potential conflict, it was boundary-pressing behavior for a SCOTUS justice to associate himself with this.
(Douglas' payment for that musicological article? -- $350.)
Rep. Gerald Ford sought to have Douglas impeached largely on this ground, while also asserting that he, Ford, would never do something like this on the basis of any judge's "political philosophy or the legal opinions which he contributes to the decisions of the courts."
The Ford presidential library has Ford's big speech on the subject here.
http://www.ford.utexas.edu/library/speeches/700415b.htm
Anyway, Ford got nowhere.
Scandal can keep some one off the court. But scandal only very rarely allows for anyone to be knocked off the court. A rare counterexample -- also from the Warren Court era -- was Justice Abe Fortas. That also involved some extra-judicial activities, legal work that Fortas was doing for a Wall Street wheeler-dealer, Louis Wolfson, that may have included asking the president for a pardon for Wolfson in connection with securities fraud charges.
Yet even in Fortas' case, the Wolfson matter would probably not have threatened his tenure as an associate justice except that he over-reached and sought to become the next chief justice. LBJ nominated Fortas for Chief when Earl Warren indicated his interest in stepping down. Republicans naturally wanted to let the next President -- whom they hoped would be Nixon, not Humphrey -- decide on the next Chief Justice, so they made a fight of this. The Wolfson business came out in the course of that fight, and it not only kept Fortas out of the CJ seat, it led to pressure that caused his resignation from the AJ seat as well.
The point?
Justices are very seldom impeached or pressured off the bench in any case. In the rarte exceptional case, it is something they've done 'on the side' that causes the trouble, not as Rep. Ford put it "the legal opinions which he contributes to the decisions of the courts," however misguided.
But hey, if you wanna try, try. There are worse things you could be doing with your time. There just aren't any less fruitful things you could be doing.
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