AJ 025 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, Infant Mortality

• School: College of The Sequoias
• Department: Administration of Justice (AJ)
• Course: AJ 025
• Professor: shirk

Document Summary

Received 5 year prison sentence, but refused to resign, so he was still getting paid. After investigation, house voted 417-0 to impeach nixon (only way to remove judge); in senate trials, body invoked senate rule xi, allowing presiding officer to appoint committee of senators to receive evidence and take testimony . 12-member bipartisan committee recommended impeachment; senate went on to impeach nixon based on grand jury testimony. Ruling: 9 (blackmun, kennedy, o"connor, rehnquist, scalia, souter, stevens, thomas, white) to 0. Yes: senate"s judgement was affirmed, impeachments can be political questions. Court found that sole meant judicial branch was not to be included (a textually demonstrable commitment to a coordinate political department) Framers believed that legislature should try impeachments, and court was too small to justly try impeachments. Scotus ruled that judicial branch is "checked" by impeachments, so judicial involvement in impeachments might violate separation of powers (separation avoids bias) Judicial intrusion into impeachments would create confusion.