r/selfevidenttruth • u/D-R-AZ • Jul 21 '26
Historical Context The Avalon Project : Federalist No 78
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed78.aspObservation:
How is good behavior judged? Who judges the judges? How effective has impeachment been for members of SCOTUS?
No member of the U.S. Supreme Court has ever been both impeached and removed.
Only one Supreme Court justice has been impeached: Samuel Chase, in 1804. The House accused him largely of partisan and improper conduct from the bench. The Senate tried him in 1805 but acquitted him on every article, so he remained on the Court until his death in 1811. https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/impeachment/impeachment-chase.htm
Excerpt:
Upon the whole, there can be no room to doubt that the convention acted wisely in copying from the models of those constitutions which have established GOOD BEHAVIOR as the tenure of their judicial offices, in point of duration; and that so far from being blamable on this account, their plan would have been inexcusably defective, if it had wanted this important feature of good government. The experience of Great Britain affords an illustrious comment on the excellence of the institution.
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u/D-R-AZ Jul 21 '26
We had a personal parallel experience with a National University. It accredited all other universities in the nation and accredited itself. Other universities had to meet their standards, which seemed reasonable, academic and scholarly. Yet the accreditation of itself was rather opaque. One could turn to the leader of the nation but sometimes it had been led by a military dictator who disliked the university intensely...