American Judiciary, Part 2: An Independent Federal Judiciary
One of the first pieces of legislation crafted in the first Congress was the Judiciary Act of 1789, signed into law by President George Washington on September 24. This act established that “The supreme court of the United States shall consist of a chief justice and five associate justices” and that it would meet in two sessions each year in the nation’s capital.” President Washington nominated six Supreme Court justices, including John Jay as the first chief justice, but his appointments were based as much on political orientation as on judicial experience. However, in the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican party swept John Adams and the Federalists from power, capturing the presidency and both houses of Congress.
Tom Hand, creator and publisher of Americana Corner, discusses how the federalists took control of the national judiciary, and why it still matters today.
Images courtesy of Library of Congress, National Archives, National Portrait Gallery - Smithsonian Institution, New York Public Library, Encyclopedia Virginia, National Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wikimedia.
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.