Many judges, including U.S. Supreme Court justices, are given lifetime appointments. This presents obvious issues since judges can do a lot of damage if they go off the deep end. How do we get rid of whacked-out judges? Looking at it from the other side, what happens if a Supreme Court judge is greatly disliked by, say, the president and Congress–can they do something to give him/her the boot? –Frauendorfer, via e-mail
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Lifetime appointments aren’t just for Supreme Court justices but for all federal judges. Under Article III of the Constitution, they “hold their offices during good behavior.” For the most part that means till death, resignation, or retirement, but judges who misbehave badly enough can be removed from office by impeachment, same as for the president and “all civil officers of the United States.” To judge from the impeachment record, such misbehavior is pretty rare. To date only 17 federal officeholders have had impeachment proceedings started against them in the House of Representatives; of the 15 tried by the Senate (the other two bailed first), only seven were convicted and removed from office. Thirteen of the seventeen impeachments (and all seven convictions) were of federal judges. Only one Supreme Court justice has been impeached: Samuel Chase, in 1804. Historians agree the charges against Chase were politically motivated; in any case he was acquitted by the Senate.
Out-of-it judges, particularly at the highest level, aren’t unusual. “The judiciary is the nation’s premier geriatric occupation,” Judge Richard Posner observed in 1995. Garrow, in a 2000 article bluntly entitled “Mental Decrepitude on the U.S. Supreme Court,” finds 18 cases of mental deterioration, stroke, or other forms of mental impairment–just under 20 percent of all Supreme Court justices. Examples:
aChief Justice William Rehnquist (1972-2005) for years took strong medication for back pain that caused him to slur his speech. Hospitalized in 1981, he had hallucinations and other withdrawal symptoms and tried to escape in his pj’s. In 2004 he announced he had thyroid cancer but continued to serve as chief justice even though he clearly wasn’t strong enough physically or mentally. The other justices knew he couldn’t read the materials but continued to pretend he was participating.
