Litigation

Short History for IA Judicial Impeachment

By Peter Hardin

Iowa’s history of impeaching judges is quite short, and the (first and ) last episode occurred more than a century ago.

Around the country, more than a dozen states have addressed judicial impeachment in the past six years, with many of them targeting a particular judge for a controversial decision.

These intriguing facts are reported in dispatches, respectively, from the “Iowa Republican” blog and from  a media backgrounder by the National Center for State Courts. Together, they provide context for a proposal in Iowa’s legislature to impeach four state Supreme Court justices (see Gavel Grab).

In Iowa, the state House of Representatives has filed impeachment articles only three times, and none of the impeachment bids was successful in the Senate, according to the blog:

“With three recently elected State Representatives talking about impeaching the four remaining members of the Iowa Supreme Court, it is the appropriate time to look back at the state?s history of previous impeachments.”

“There has only been one impeachment attempt of a judge, and that stemmed from the fines and penalties he imposed as well as suspicion of collusion with the district attorney.”

The judicial impeachment try occurred in 1886.

According to the National Center for State Courts, a Justice at Stake partner, “Impeachment has long been a threat with which politicians have confronted the judiciary.” The last decade has seen a “dramatic increase” in threats to impeach state judges over their decisions, and actual drafting of legislation, the Center reported.

The impeachment proposal has surfaced in Iowa following voters’ decision in November to oust three state Supreme Court justices who were on the retention ballot. The judges were targeted over their role in a unanimous court ruling. It  struck down as unconstitutional a ban on same-sex marriages.

Full post as published by The Gavel on December 30, 2010 (boomark / email).