How impeachment of a Supreme Court judge works

Ffollowing allegations of impropriety related to financial disclosures and conflicts of interest, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez filed articles of impeachment against two conservatives Supreme Court justices, marking the first attempt to impeach a judge in more than two centuries.

“The crisis of rampant corruption at the Supreme Court has now turned into a constitutional crisis that threatens American democracy,” Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said in a statement. Press release on Wednesday. “The pattern of refusal by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to recuse themselves from important matters before the court in which they maintain widely documented financial and personal complications constitutes a grave threat to the American rule of law.”

Alito attracted scrutiny for a inverted flag flying outside your house, which supposedly symbolizes support for the attack on the Capitol on January 6th. Alito said the flag was raised briefly by his wife. Thomas was criticized for not disclosing trips paid for by Republican mega-donor Harlan Crow. He also refused to recuse himself from cases related to former President Donald Trump, despite his wife’s political involvement in supporting Trump as his administration sought to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.. He argued that he did not need to report these trips because they were “personal hospitality of intimate friends, who had no business before the Court.” (In June, Thomas revealed that Crow paid for travel expenses in Bali and California.)

Eight months ago, the Supreme Court adopted its own code of conduct to mitigate the setback against the Court last year, although the regulations are unenforceable.

See more information: Breaking Supreme Court Ethics Rules While Justices Come Under Attack

Ocasio-Cortez introduced her resolution following the Supreme Court ruling that Trump and former presidents have some degree of immunity from prosecution for official acts, which could affect criminal proceedings against Trump.

In all of American history, only one Supreme Court justice has been impeached. See how the process works and what happened the one time it was successful.

How impeachment works

As in any other impeachment process – including that of presidents and judges – the power to impeach a Supreme Court judge rests first with the House of Representatives. A House lawmaker must introduce an article of impeachment before a vote can be taken. If the majority of the House votes in favor of impeachment, the articles will be sent to the Senate for trial. Two-thirds of the Senate must then vote to convict, which would remove the judge from the court.

See more information: What the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling means for Trump’s criminal cases

It will be effectively impossible for Ocasio-Cortez’s articles of impeachment to pass the Republican-led House, experts say. Lawmakers in favor of impeachment would not only have to overcome the conservative holdout, but they would also have to work with the House Judiciary Committee, which is led by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio.

Frank Bowman, professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, catches Ocasio-Cortez’s attention impeachment efforts against “performative” ministers.

“This is not the way you proceed if you are serious,” he says. “If you are serious, you develop a factual record. You allow representatives of the accused or suspected impeached official to participate, at least in some capacity, in the process of investigating the matter. You deliberate carefully before drawing the attention of the entire House.”

He has Has a judge ever been impeached?

It has been relatively common in American history to impeach judges compared to other federal positions. “Judges, in the federal system, are appointed for the duration of good behavior, effectively for life, and so it’s really the only mechanism to get rid of a bad judge,” says Bowman. At least 15 federal judges have been impeached, according to the United States courts. Only eight judges were convicted, although experts say some others resigned before their cases went to trial or before any official articles of impeachment could be served on them.

But this has only happened once for a Supreme Court justice. The last time articles of impeachment were filed against a judge it was in 1804. Samuel Chase, who had served on the nation’s highest court since 1796, was impeached by the House and tried in the Senate for his partisan rhetoric. “We thought about [Supreme Court Justices] as being purely appellate judges who sit on only a few appellate cases each year. But judges back then did a lot of other things,” says Bowman. “They were on the circuit, which means they traveled around the country, sometimes even serving as trial judges. And in that capacity, Justice was openly affiliated with the Federalist Party and openly opposed Thomas Jefferson’s Democrats.” Chase was eventually impeached on the grounds that he refused “to dismiss biased jurors and to exclude or limit defense witnesses in two politically sensitive cases.” according to the United States Senate. He was also accused of promoting his political beliefs.

Although a majority of senators voted that Chase was guilty, lawmakers still fell short of a two-thirds majority. Chase was acquitted by the Senate in 1805 on all charges.

Although Chase was the only Supreme Court justice to be impeached, there have been other ethics scandals in the past. Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Abe Fortas would become Chief Justice in 1968, when critics pointed out that Fortas had been paid $15,000 to teach college seminars. The money came from former clients of a law firm whose cases could potentially reach the Supreme Court. “At the time there were no ethics laws requiring disclosure, but Fortas was forced to recognize that this was inappropriate on his part, and the result was that he withdrew his appointment as Chief Justice,” says law professor Michael Gerhardt constitutional at the University of North Carolina School of Law.