At least some of the founders found the impeachment power to be the mechnaism by which a legislature could remedy a judicial system that was encroaching on legislative power. Judges that "make" law from the bench via misconstruction of statute or otherwise stifling legislative intent are legitimate targets for impeachment and removal.
America's founders intended that Congress impeach activist judges. In The Federalist No.81, Alexander Hamilton argued that "the supposed danger of judiciary encroachments on the legislative authority...is in reality a phantom." Why? Because, wrote Hamilton, "there never can be a danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body entrusted with [impeachment]."This doctrine was taken so seriously that Congress would not even remove an insane alcoholic judge, Pickering I believe, early in the Republic's history....
According to Professor Raoul Berger, impeachment was created precisely because some actions for which public officials should be removed from office are not covered by the criminal law. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" already had 400-year-old roots in English common law when the framers placed it in the U.S. Constitution. English judges were impeached for misuse of their official position or power, mal-administration, unconstitutional or extrajudicial opinions, misinterpreting the law, and encroaching on the power of the legislature.
http://www.childrensjustice.org/impeachment/impch-is-cure.htm <-- Article
Insanity and alcoholism to not render a judge a political activist. Pickering was impeached, convicted and removed. Although it does not suprise me that Congress is generally reluctant to exercize it's power. Congress is a lilly-livered institution, focused on it's own self-preservation, and these days, self preservation by pandering to special interests, and by shifting wealth from a smaller number of producing voters to a larger population of consuming voters. "Once half the population figures out it can vote largess for itself from the public treasury ..." and all that.
The "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" would of course include what we today think of as indictable criminal offenses--both felonies and misdemeanors--but also included mere misbehavior in office. William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, the standard explanation of English law at the time our Constitution was written, clearly made impeachment the remedy for any act that might be an injury to the state or system of government, whether it was actually a crime or not. "Crimes and misdemeanors are mere synonymous terms;" Blackstone wrote, "but, in common usage, the word crime is made to denote offenses of a deeper and more atrocious dye, while small faults and omission of less consequence are comprised under the gentler name of misdemeanor." That the Founders shared this view was made clear when they specified that an impeached and removed official would still "be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law" (Article 1, Section 3). Impeachment was the political solution; criminal matters would still be handled by the courts.In their own commentary on the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, some of the Founders explained more about how they expected the process to work. In "Federalist Number 65," first published in the New York Packet on March 7, 1788, Alexander Hamilton wrote that impeachment was for "those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are," he continued, "of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL" [emphasis in the original]. Hamilton went on to explain why the Senate was the ideal body to try and if necessary remove those who might be impeached by the House. It was large enough and democratic enough to be entrusted with so momentous a duty and yet sufficiently insulated from the eddying currents of public opinion to follow the law strictly in what the Founders anticipated would likely be a surrounding atmosphere of intense political battle.
http://www.his.tcu.edu/Frog&Globe/SiteArchives/Woodworth-Impeachment.htm
Here is another one. I found quite a few using the tersms "impeachment" "founders" or "impeachment" "chase" in the Google search engine.
Impeachment at the federal level is basically like a courtroom conviction in the sense that when a person is impeached, that person has been convicted of wrongdoing. The criminal charges are generally stated in the articles of impeachment. The House decides on impeachment while the Senate tries the impeachment. The Congressional Quarterly issue, "Impeachment and the U.S. Congress," describes the power well."Impeachment is perhaps the most awesome though the least used power of Congress. In essence, it is a political action, couched in legal terminology, directed against a ranking official of the federal government. The House of Representatives is the prosecutor. The Senate chamber is the courtroom; and the Senate is the judge and jury. The final penalty is removal from office and possible disqualification from further office. There is no appeal."
http://www.somacon.com/blog/page20.php <-- Political Parties and Impeachment
Chase actually could have been removed legitimately because his behavior on the bench was abusive and biased IMO.
His judicial decision was flawed. The party that Chase conviced was pardoned. The impeachment proceeding broke down along party lines (as did the Clinton impeachment - see, it really IS a political process), with the quasi-legal arguments being focued on the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" language in the Constitution. The winners in the trial took the view that you espouse, impeachment is not a political weapon, and is only to be used against a judge who breaks the law. A narrow "plain meaning" construction of Congress' Constitutional power of impeachment. I fall on the other side. Congress shouldn't impeach willy-nilly, but it darn well should impeach judges that legislate from the bench, and it should impeach judges that misapply or misconstrue Congressional intent.
State legislative bodies could do the same.
The Schiavo case is a tougher nut though. In part because the case was a cilvil matter, not a criminal one. And in general, the stakes of civil disputes are lower. Historically, they have been ALWAYS lower, it is only recently (the past 20 years) that an error in civil court decision could possibly result in death of a legally innocent person.
It is interesting that Hamilton, normally the most realistic of men wrt the motivations and designs of men utterly misunderestimated the judiciary becoming so powerful and so willing to re-write law to its own image.
But the interesting question here is why did the judiciary reject its conservative bias. Jefferson was not worried about the judiciary because it was liberal but precisely because he feared it would be a force for conservativism which it was. But it was designed to be out of the control of the political system and to change very slowly. While the political figures, Congressmen and the Presidency can be changed with varying degrees of frequency from two to four to six years COULD complete a total turnover of the government the courts lifetime appointment should make them the most conservative of the branches. What happened?