What the Chief Justice Should Have Said by Linda Greenhouse

[elleng]

'Two decades ago, during one of the periodic eruptions of congressional foolishness toward the federal courts, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist spoke up for judicial independence.

It’s too bad that the current chief justice, John G. Roberts Jr., hasn’t been equally willing to speak up for the judiciary — in this case, for his own court.

Chief Justice Rehnquist stepped forward after several members of Congress, including Senator Bob Dole, at the time the presumed Republican presidential nominee, called for the impeachment of a federal district judge in New York, Harold Baer Jr. The judge had just ruled that evidence in a drug case could not be used in court because it was the product of an illegal search. President Bill Clinton, pivoting sharply to the right during his 1996 re-election campaign, let it be known that he thought it would be a nice thing if Judge Baer — one of his own appointees — resigned from the bench.

Chief Justice Rehnquist had a few years earlier published a book, “Grand Inquests,” about the Senate’s refusal in 1805 to convict and remove Justice Samuel Chase, who had been impeached by the House of Representatives at the behest of political enemies and critics of his rulings. In the midst of the storm over Judge Baer, the chief justice used a previously scheduled speech at American University in Washington, D.C., to restate what he called the “guiding principle” of the Chase episode, that federal judges should never be impeached for their decisions. “From that day to this,” he said, that principle had served to protect judicial independence, “one of the crown jewels of our system of government.” The controversy faded, and Judge Baer remained a federal judge.

Then on New Year’s Day, 2005, in what was to prove his last year-end report on the federal judiciary (he died in office in September of that year), Chief Justice Rehnquist used the occasion to respond to a new congressional eruption. A Republican congressman from Florida, Tom Feeney, had introduced the Reaffirmation of American Independence Resolution, declaring that Supreme Court justices and other judges who cited foreign law in their opinions threatened the “sovereignty of the United States.” Judges who based their decisions on foreign precedents risked the “ultimate remedy” of impeachment, Representative Feeney said in introducing the measure, which quickly attracted dozens of co-sponsors.

Repeating his warning from nine years earlier, the chief justice said that “a judge’s judicial acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment.” '>>>

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/opinion/sunday/what-the-chief-justice-should-have-said.html?

[guillaumeb]

1. Recommended.

In my view, Roberts was selected for his history as a corporate shill and his reliably right wing politics. His willingness to engage in legislating from the Bench of the SCOTUS was a huge bonus.