Impeachment of Federal Judges: An Historical Overview
![handle is hein.journals/nclr49 and id is 103 raw text is: IMPEACHMENT OF FEDERAL JUDGES:
AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
FRANK THOMPSON, JR.* AND DANIEL H. POLLITTr
The Place of Justice is an hallowed place, and therefore ought to be
preserved without scandal and corruption. These were the words of
Francis Bacon, philosopher, scientist, and the most gifted of the English
Renaissance men. But in his capacity as Lord Chancellor, he came a
cropper. In 1621, the highest judicial officer in England was impeached
for accepting bribes from litigants-sometimes from litigants on both sides
of the case-and his only defense was that he never gave the briber his
due unless he deserved it on the merits. Bacon was charged by the House
of Commons, found guilty by the House of Lords, and sentenced to im-
prisonment in the Tower during the King's pleasure. King James
liberated him from the prison within a few days and gave him a full
pardon. But Bacon never regained his lost glories. In 1626 he contracted
a cold while stuffing a goose with snow in order to study the effects of
refrigeration on putrefaction. The exposure proved fatal to both.1
The Bacon impeachment illustrates the problem raised by the Roman
philosopher Juvenal: Quis quatodiet ipsos custodes, or, who is to judge
the judges. The matter was debated in the Philadelphia Constitutional
Convention when John Dickinson proposed that federal judges should be
removed from office on petition to the President by both the House of
Representatives and the Senate. This practice was then in effect in Eng-
land and in seven states, but it was decisively rejected by the Founding
Fathers on the theory that it would make the Judiciary dangerously
dependent upon the whim of the current legislatures.2 Instead, the Consti-
* Member of the United States House of Representatives.
f Professor of Law, University of North Carolina School of Law.
1IJ. BORKIN, THE CORRUPT JUDGE 5 (1962) [hereinafter cited as BORKIN].
Mr. Borkin's book is by far the most definitive work on the subject of impeachment,
and it should be heavily used by all subsequent writers on the subject. It compli-
ments very well the earlier study on the subject-A. SIMPsoN, FEDERAL IMPEACH-
MENTS (1916)-which appends all the charges in impeachment cases to the date
of publication. See also Simpson, Federal Impeachinents, 64 U. PA. L. REV. 803
(1916). Other notable law review coverage of the subject includes: Brown, Im-
peachinent of Federal Judiciary, 26 HARV. L. REV. 684 (1913) ; ten Broek, Partisan
Politics and Federal Judgeship Imnpeachment Since 1903, 23 MINN. L. REV. 185
(1939) [hereinafter cited as ten Broek]; and Yankwich, Ivpeachment of Civil
Officers Under the Federal Constitution, 26 GEO. L. REV. 849 (1938).
'Gouverneur Morris and James Wilson argued that such dependence by the](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/nclr49&div=11&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Impeachment of Federal Judges: An Historical Overview
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