Posted on 03/02/2005 2:55:26 PM PST by Road Warrior ‘04
Not sure if this question should be posted as vanity, but here it is:
Constitutional scholars and lawyers: If Supreme Court Justices cite International Law to come to a decision, as they did in the death penalty for minors case, can the justice(s) citing international law and custom and not our Constitution be impeached and removed from the high court for delving outside of our Constituion?
If Congress will not regulate the Supreme Court by simple majority, as they have the power to do, what makes you imagine that they would impeach Justices by a 2/3 vote?
You forget-they thought of everything.
The CJ only presides if the defendant is the President or Vice-President.
Otherwise, the President of teh Senate would preside.
Exactly. Just replace "go after SC justices" with anything else you care to name.
It may in the last place be observed that the supposed danger of judiciary encroachments on the legislative authority, which has been upon many occasions reiterated, is in reality a phantom. Particular misconstructions and contraventions of the will of the legislature may now and then happen; but they can never be so extensive as to amount to an inconvenience, or in any sensible degree to affect the order of the political system. This may be inferred with certainty, from the general nature of the judicial power, from the objects to which it relates, from the manner in which it is exercised, from its comparative weakness, and from its total incapacity to support its usurpations by force. And the inference is greatly fortified by the consideration of the important constitutional check which the power of instituting impeachments in one part of the legislative body, and of determining upon them in the other, would give to that body upon the members of the judicial department. This is alone a complete security. There never can be danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body intrusted with it, while this body was possessed of the means of punishing their presumption, by degrading them from their stations. While this ought to remove all apprehensions on the subject, it affords, at the same time, a cogent argument for constituting the Senate a court for the trial of impeachments.
AS for your other post regarding "fast and loose with the facts,"
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, 1805:
Chase was charged with eight articles of impeachment, arising out of conduct that allegedly occurred while he served as a District Court judge, in cases in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia.
Article I alleged that he deprived a particular defendant of his constitutional rights and prejudiced the jury against him, subsequently sentencing him to death.
Articles II through VI involved the same case, in which Chase was accused of conduct that was prejudicial to the defendant, including empaneling a juror who had declared that he had made up his mind in advance of the trial; refusing to allow testimony from a material witness favorable to the defendant; interfering with the presentation of the case by the defendant's attorney; and procedural irregularities that amounted to unlawful arresting, imprisonment, and indictment of the defendant.
Article VII alleged that he improperly pressured a grand jury \"with intent to procure the prosecution\" of a particular defendant, and effectively ordered the district attorney to find a pretext upon which to prosecute him. Article VIII charged him with engaging in a \"political harangue\" with \"intent to excite the odium\" of a grand jury, for the purpose of turning the grand jury and the citizenry \"against the Government of the United States,\" and with behaving generally with the \"low purpose of an electioneering partisan.\"
While there appears to be consensus among scholars that Chase's impeachment was motivated by then-President Thomas Jefferson's hostility toward Chase and his Federalist views, they also seem to agree that Chase engaged in the sort of ill-mannered behavior described in the articles of impeachment.
Nonetheless (and perhaps because of an awareness that the proceeding originated out of partisan animus), the Senate ultimately narrowly acquitted him on all counts.
Note here the the House voted to send to the Senate 8 articles of Impeachment.
This is the definition of "Impeachment."
Then the Senate votes to acquit or not.
http://www.constitutionproject.org/ci/newsroom_guide/29.htm
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