Another day, another ProPublica investigation about Harlan Crow’s lavish undisclosed gifts to Clarence Thomas! In addition to paying for Thomas to go on vacation and buying a Georgia property where Thomas’ mother currently lives, Crow also paid the boarding school tuition for Thomas’ grandnephew, coming in at an estimated $100,000.
Crow is a huge figure in conservative politics. He, and groups linked with him, often have cases before the court—and Thomas has ruled in their favor. Ethics experts have called foul, saying Thomas’ failures to report his connections to Crow are flagrant violations of financial disclosure law.
There’s not a ton that Congress can do about Thomas, or any justice who appears to be engaging in questionable ethical conduct, because the nature of the court is to be a self-governing body. Congress can investigate the court—which it is kind of doing—or they can choose to impeach, which some lawmakers are calling for.
How would impeaching a Supreme Court justice actually work? To shed some light on the situation, we looked back to the one time it happened: way back in 1804, when Congress tried to boot Associate Justice Samuel Chase.
They managed to get impeachment proceedings going, which lasted for three months and ultimately ended in his acquittal.
Chase was known to be quite a character—“a staunch Federalist with a volcanic personality,” according to the U.S. Senate archives, who earned the nickname of “Old Bacon Face” because of his reddish-brown complexion. As a young lawyer in 1762, he was expelled from a debate group for “extremely irregular and indecent behavior.” Despite this rowdy streak, he went on to a long career in politics, serving in the Maryland General Assembly for 20 years, and even became one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. (Yes, the only Supreme Court justice to face impeachment is also considered a founding father of the United States. Kind of on-brand for us?)
Chase went on to serve as a judge in Maryland’s lower courts, and was first appointed to the Supreme Court by President George Washington in 1796. Chase’s troubles began during his eighth term on the court, under President Thomas Jefferson. (Chase had openly backed his opponent, John Adams, in the 1800 presidential election.)
Jefferson didn’t love the idea of Supreme Court justices serving a lifetime appointment, fearing the judiciary could get too powerful. And Chase seemed like a perfect example of Jefferson’s fears, since he already had a reputation for partisanship and controversy.
Jefferson’s party initiated impeachment proceedings against Chase, accusing him of refusing to dismiss biased jurors and of excluding or limiting defense witnesses in two politically sensitive cases (Supreme Court justices at that time were required to preside over district courts). The impeachment managers also hoped to prove that Chase continually promoted his political agenda while serving on the bench, and accused him of “tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan.”
Chase testified at his own impeachment trial and argued that he was being persecuted for political convictions, not any real criminal behavior—a familiar tune, sung by Donald Trump just recently after being charged with 34 felony counts by the state of New York. In the end, Jefferson’s party did not have the votes to convict, and Chase was acquitted of all charges. He kept his spot on the court, and he remained in that job until he died in 1811.
Though the impeachment effort failed, historians believe that’s a good thing, because it could have set a dangerous precedent for presidents and Congress to simply look to impeachment if they didn’t approve of a sitting justice. It was seen as a win for judicial independence.
But Thomas’ situation is pretty different from Chase’s. Thomas appears to have violated federal disclosure law when he failed to report his financial connections to Crow. Federal law states that the “identity of the source, a brief description and the value of all gifts” must be disclosed. Plus, there are the Judicial Conference filing rules, which require any gift over $415 to also be disclosed. ProPublica’s investigations indicate that Thomas violated both laws on numerous occasions.
Yet despite these transgressions, experts don’t think impeachment is on the table. It’s an incredibly rare occurrence—after all, out of more than 100 justices who have served on the court since it first convened in 1790, only one has been impeached.
