Capitol Hill hearings could fill up quickly in the new year once the Speaker of the House is finally elected. House Republicans have promised a series of investigations into the Biden administration during the 118th Congress this month. Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are scrutinizing the actions of conservative Supreme Court members.
Judiciary Commission Chairman Richard Durbin, Democrat, Illinois, is investigating Judge Samuel Alito’s alleged divulgation of court rulings in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby in 2014, which dealt with contraception and religious rights. I am considering.
This argument was made following the publication of Alito’s draft opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on May 2 and the Roe v. Wade decision on June 24, overturning the 1973 abortion decision. Occurred. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered an investigation into the leak, but to date the results of the investigation have not been released.
Durbin also criticizes Lieutenant Judge Clarence Thomas for not turning down a case involving his wife, Ginny Thomas. urged Chief of Staff Meadows to prevent the election from being approved.
At a time when confidence in the High Court is at a historic low, it’s worth taking a look back at previous controversies surrounding Supreme Court justices and the politics surrounding them.
The only judge ever to be impeached was Samuel Chase of Maryland, signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was a federalist sympathetic judge and openly criticized President Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party for dismantling the network of lower courts established by President John Adams’ administration in 1801.
In retaliation, the Democratic-Republican House of Representatives impeached him on a series of trumped-up charges, alleging that he “acted in an arbitrary, oppressive, and unjust manner” in court. He was acquitted in a Senate trial presided over by Vice President Aaron Burr indicted for the murder of Alexander Hamilton.
The Chase case established a double precedent. It shows that the judge does his best by keeping politics private while ensuring that he is not removed from office for voicing his opinion. 160 years later, it was too much political justice to force him to step down from the bench.
Abe Fortas was a close ally of President Lyndon Johnson and successfully nominated him as an associate judge in 1965.
The official history of the Senate states: He briefed the president on the secret court deliberations. And on behalf of the president, he pressured senators to oppose the Vietnam War. He also received an inflated fee out of private interest to teach a summer course at American University.
In a conservative reaction to Johnson’s great society and liberal advances in the 1960s, a coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats blocked the nomination, and Johnson withdrew on October 1.
Fortas’ troubles did not end there. In 1969, it was revealed that in 1966 he began receiving $20,000 a year in retention for the rest of his life from the foundation of former client and later convicted securities fraud, Lewis Wolson. His political capital was depleted in the nomination race, and Fortas was under pressure and he resigned on May 15.
The only Justice threatened with impeachment after Samuel Chase was the controversial and colorful William O. Douglas. Douglas graduated from Yale Law School, where he taught and mentored Fortus, but also leveraged his political alliances.
He was the New Dealer and Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission when President Franklin Roosevelt appointed him in 1939. Sitting on the court, he maintained close ties with the White House. , Roosevelt even considered making him his running mate in 1944. Henry Wallace.
During the anti-Communist hysteria of the early 1950s, his liberal tendencies made him the target of politically-motivated indictments of serious and petty crimes, never seriously pursued in the House of Representatives.
Then, encouraged by the Fortas case, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Michigan) initiated impeachment proceedings in April 1970.
Douglas’ image was tainted by three divorces and a fourth marriage in 1966 to a 22-year-old student. “It fueled the fires of unrest, rebellion and revolution.”
The more serious charges were financial. For nearly his ten years, Douglas served on the board of directors of the Parvin Foundation. Founder Albert Parvin had an interest in Las Vegas casinos and was known to be associated with both organized crime members and Louis Wolfson. Douglas earned a total of $100,000 from the position, but after Fortas’ resignation, he severed his ties with Parvin.
Ford did not help the gravity of his case by declaring justice to be a champion of pornography. and contributed articles on the subject, including folk songs, to obscure magazines that published photographs of naked women.
Democrats, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Emmanuel Sellar (DN.Y.), rallied in favor of progressive Douglas in a way Fortus had not. Commission hearings he concluded in December, with no further action. Douglas retired in 1976 during his presidency of Gerald Ford. His 36-year tenure remains in court records.
Perhaps the most important constitutional legacy of the Douglas case was an observation made by Ford himself. “Impeachable crimes are those that the majority of the House considers to be at a particular moment in history,” he declared at the time.
Ford’s candor is worth remembering when considering judgments handed down on House or Senate committees regarding judges, presidents, or fellow legislators. Whichever side of the aisle the investigation unfolds, official misconduct is inevitably viewed through the lens of the political moment.
Former Wall Street Journal executive Paul C. Atkinson is a contributing editor for the New York Sun.
