American Judiciary, Part 1: Courts in Early America
In Colonial America, because judges were appointed and paid for by the Crown, they were seen as an extension of Royal authority and its tyranny. Consequently, as states created their own constitutions after 1776, most gave the power to appoint judges to the legislature. This resulted in legal decisions based on the whims of the majority, while minority rights were often denied. Thus, creating an independent federal judiciary based on fixed principles with a clear separation of power from the other branches was one of the goals of the Constitutional Convention.
Tom Hand, creator and publisher of Americana Corner, discusses the ideas behind the creation of a national judiciary, and why it still matters today.
Images courtesy of Encyclopedia Virginia, Wikimedia, New York Public Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, Library of Congress, National Archives, National Gallery of Art, National Portrait Gallery - Smithsonian Institution.
There has been only one instance in our nation’s history of a United States Supreme Court Justice being impeached, and that occurred in 1804 during a significant political tussle over the independence and power of the judiciary. The justice in question was Samuel Chase and his alleged crimes seem trivial in retrospect, but Chase was simply a pawn in an ongoing battle of wills between two American icons, President Thomas Jefferson and Chief Justice John Marshall that took place in the early 1800s. And the decision reached in his case would have a profound impact on the future of the country.