...As part of that plan, the Framers took care to ensure that judges were accountable to the people at all times. Although federal judges were appointed and did not face election, the Founders made certain that federal judges would be easily removable from office through impeachment, a procedure that today is widely misunderstood and rarely used. While the current belief is that a judge may be removed only for the commission of a criminal offense or the violation of a statutory law, [3] it was not this way at the beginning. As Alexander Hamilton explained, "the practice of impeachments was a bridle" [4] — a way to keep judges accountable to the people. And what did the Framers believe were impeachable offenses?
According to Justice Joseph Story, a "Father of American Jurisprudence" [author of "COMMENTARIES ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES"]:
The offences to which the power of impeachment has been and is ordinarily applied. . . . are what are aptly termed political offences, growing out of personal misconduct, or gross neglect, or usurpation, or habitual disregard of the public interests. [5]
Under the Framers, impeachment occurred whenever a judge attempted to carry a personal agenda through the court; but today impeachment has become what Justice Story warned that it should never be: a power "so weak and torpid as to be capable of lulling offenders into a general security and indifference." [6] The federal judiciary, because it now enjoys a level of insulation from the people that the Framers never intended and to which they today would vehemently object, is unafraid to reshape American culture and policy to mirror its own political whims and personal values...