Impeachment

Last week I received an e-mail from some well intentioned people asking me to support their effort to impeach the five reactionary injustices comprising the majority on what is arguably the worst Supreme Court ever. I am certainly sympathetic to their grievances. There is no doubt that the decisions which have given the oligopoly the power of an oligarchy, have blurred the separation of church and state, and have eliminated the protection of some of our most basic civil rights are egregious decisions that are threatening to throw us back into an era so many people worked so hard and sacrificed so much to leave behind. That concerned citizens should seek a remedy for the damages being caused by those unjust decisions is perfectly understandable, but I object to the efforts to impeach Injustices Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy for the same reason that I objected to the impeachment of Bill Clinton and would have objected to the impeachment of George W. Bush. I cannot bear the thought of reasonable people thinking that I am acting like a liberal version of the dumb asses who are calling for the impeachment of President Obama.

Impeaching and removing anyone from his or her office or position is an extreme remedy. Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here. I do not think there is an equivalency between the Judicial reaction-ism of the Robert’s Court and the judicial activism of the Warren Court, but there was a large percentage of people who objected so strongly to the judicial activism of the Warren Court that they called for the impeachment of Chief Justice Warren. If it had been left to the public to decide, it is quite possible that Chief Justice Warren and other liberal justices would have been impeached. The point I am trying to make is that our founding fathers were correct in seeing the danger of a court that is too easily swayed by public opinion and/or political concerns.

So when is impeachment justified? You may have noticed that when I stated my objection to impeaching the Injustices on our present Supreme Court I did not include the names of Injustices Thomas and Scalia. There is a very significant difference between a Justice who makes horrible and harmful decisions because that Justice is a mindless ideologue and a Justice who makes horrible and harmful decisions because that justice has a conflict of interest. Injustices Thomas and Scalia fall onto the latter category. The fact that they refuse to recues themselves from cases in which they have a clear conflict of interest is a violation of judicial ethics. Furthermore, the decisions they have consistently made in those cases are precisely the decisions that confirm the biases you would expect to see as a result of those conflicts of interest. This smacks of corruption on their part, and it fully justifies the remedy of impeachment and removal from the court. My advice to the group that sent me the e-mail is to narrow your goal.