March 20, 2025 - 8:15pm
No judge is in danger of being impeached by Republicans, and no Supreme Court justice is in danger of being impeached by Democrats. After the fall of Roe, Democrats started to threaten one-sided impeachments of GOP-appointed justices. Republicans are now calling for the impeachment of Judge James Boasberg, who on Saturday sought to block Donald Trump’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants. Both parties lack the political power to pull off these votes, which would require two-thirds of the Senate, but outrage from the political class misses half of the story.
Conservative Chief Justice John Roberts took the unusual step of issuing a statement this week to rebuke calls for Boasberg’s impeachment. But as the law professor Josh Blackman points out, there was no such statement to rebuke high-profile Democrats’ entirely politicised calls for his fellow conservative justices to be impeached last year. There wasn’t, for example, a single peep from Roberts after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called to impeach Samuel Alito, or when Democrats demanded the same of Clarence Thomas. Similarly, he did not release a statement when Sen. Ron Wyden called on then-President Joe Biden to ignore a ruling on mifepristone, as some on the Right are doing now with Boasberg. “I realise that Chief Justice Roberts is hitting the panic button,” adds Blackman, “but his protest has started a bit too late.”
It’s very easy to get caught up in moral panics over Trump’s ostensible norm-breaking. That is, after all, the point: the White House is embarking on a self-described “revolution” in DC. Trump is very deliberately and openly shattering certain norms, so it’s not unreasonable to worry about him violating ones we should still value highly. But on this issue, Roberts may have been swept up in the Beltway hysteria.
We could argue all day about who started this tit-for-tat doom spiral, going all the way back to Lyndon Johnson. What’s clear, though, is that writing stories, slinging commentary on cable news, and putting out statements like Roberts’ — which implicitly pointed the finger only at MAGA — makes the situation worse. It’s untrue and it inflames tensions. There are real consequences to this reflexive imbalance, like convincing Trump’s allies that the only recourse is to go into norm-destroying hyperdrive. (Although, as legal writer Margot Cleveland helpfully explains, Trump himself has thus been relatively resistant to this.)
Michael Anton’s seminal “Flight 93 Election” essay reacted to this dynamic. A Clinton presidency, Anton argued in 2016, “will be coupled with a level of vindictive persecution against resistance and dissent hitherto seen in the supposedly liberal West only in the most ‘advanced’ Scandinavian countries and the most leftist corners of Germany and England”. This lead Anton, who now works in the State Department, to reasonably ask: “So what do we have to lose by fighting back?”
This is the consequence of one-sided analyses of America’s judicial system: it leaves the Right with the sense that it’s out of options. On Roberts, Blackman wrote: “the Constitutional Crisis is a coin with two sides. Trump causes judges to overact, and judges cause Trump to overreact. Any resolution must be bilateral, not unilateral.”
This line is chilling because that task is so essential but feels impossible. Whether or not you think Trump started this fight, it’s clear everyone is now playing dirty, and there’s nobody left to call balls and strikes, which leaves all involved with less incentive to play by the rules. Even when one team does, it gets penalised.
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SubscribeStop calling this a revolution. It is a counter revolution after 40 years of a massive leftward lurch. We are simply clawing back a few inches of lost ground. And yes, I know it hurts their feelings.
As to the Deep State it has been going on since Wilson, over a hundred years.
This is a short article but it perfectly summarizes the hypocrisy not just in the matter of calling for impeachment of judges, but in the whole arena of which form of public and political behavior is deemed reprehensible. Basically, if the Left are the actors, whatever they say/do is ok with the Establishment and its media outlets; not so much if the questionable behavior is from the Right.
The other example that always sticks in my throat is the Left accusing the Right of undemocratic behavior, or, more bluntly, imperiling democracy, when the Right fails to follow the letter of every single rule and regulation. Meanwhile, Democrat-controlled cities proudly and loudly flaunt federal immigration law by declaring sanctuary cities.
As Emily notes, in our current, fevered political environment, who is supposed to stand up, call time out, and be the adult in the room?
My suspicion is that Roberts didn’t want to get involved with specific calls to impeach Supreme Court justices because he is a part of that court and he respects the division of powers in the Constitution. Unfortunately, doing so now for lower court judges gives the appearance of partisanship and doesn’t really change the constitutional issues. He would have been better off just remaining silent because as this author stated, the chances of successfully impeaching any judge are basically zero given the political situation.
Now he’s thrown fuel on the fire and given both sides ammunition to further politicize the courts. At some point we’re going to have to recognize that judges are not impartial and that they do have partisan leanings that influence their rulings. The worldviews of progressives and everybody else are sufficiently far removed from one another that they can’t be reconciled into any coherent compromise, and given the impossibility of compromise, the remaining solution to keep the peace and prevent the courts from becoming a battleground that ultimately destabilizes the entire political system is to just agree to disagree and build some balance into the courts themselves so both sides are represented and they have to come to unanimous agreement, like a jury. This would effectively create judicial gridlock that matched Congressional gridlock, which to my mind would be an acceptable remedy.
Progressives would of course hate this, scream bloody murder, and do everything in their power to stop it because they have been the primary beneficiaries of judicial activism and been the ones actively using the judiciary to make policy that they can’t get through Congress because of those pesky voters and that annoying Constitution. There’s not much question who started this, because Roe vs. Wade is the perfect example. No state, nor congress, would have passed a right to abortion in 1970, yet we had one for nearly half a century without a single voter’s having a say because of the personal opinions of five people. It is utterly hypocritical for the left to moan about judges deciding political questions and now the Chief Justice has given the appearance of taking sides himself. I’m about ready to put nine AI bots on the Supreme Court.
So,the progressives “have been the primary beneficiaries of judicial activism and been the ones actively using the judiciary to make policy that they can’t get through Congress“. Not so – even if I will grant you Roe v. Wade and gay marriage. This problem goes back to the Dred Scott decision at least (Supreme court coming out for slavery), and the right has won huge victories in Citizens United, and the newest ‘The president has full immunity’ judgment.
Yes so since the 60s
This is how leftists—cry bullies—operate. They lack any awareness of how their own behavior provokes a reaction from the people they try to bully. It’s a toxic mix of narcissism, a need for control, petty tribal hatred, and a sense of superiority.
I occasionally listen to the Rest Is Politics podcast, and Alastair Campbell embodies this kind of hateful, clueless cry-bully mindset. For example, just the other week, he was vocally cheerful about J.D. Vance being targeted while on holiday with his family.
In this country, members of the Government don’t criticise or even comment on court judgments, and rightly so, but in the US the situation is different. If the mad comments made by Biden after Roe V Wade was overturned did not merit a rebuke by Roberts, he should not have commented on Trump’s remarks the other day. It looks though very like a breach is coming where the Executive will go its own way.
When the different branches of the federal government vie for supremacy, but instead reach a deadlock, then the first instinct is to simply leave the topic. On the other hand if resolution is imperative for survival, then there is no time for deliberation, and the locally organized armed groups and militia of the nation, both volunteer, or run by the States, must decide the matter militarily. There is no one else.
Isn’t that a very Confederate attitude?
Maybe the reason is that there is an expectation for the right that they act in a mature, responsible way, while no such expectation exists for the left. So, the same act (calling for judicial impeachments) causes Roberts (and many, many, many others) to say either “oh, bless their little hearts” or “OMG, this is a crisis!” depending on which side says it.
This isn’t to say that Rs always act in a mature, responsible way (far from it!) or that the Ds never do, but…the expectation remains.
“The most dangerous moment for a bad government is that in which it sets about to reform.” –Alexis de Tocqueville
Are there any norms you value highly enough to respect them when it is not to your political advantage? Could you give us a list?
Several things wrong with this:
Alito and Thomas were threatened with impeachment by a random congressman for, essentially, taking bribes and not recusing themselves from cases where they had a personal interest. And there was some prima facie case for both. The accusations may have been overblown and motivated also by political enmity, but at least these are valid reasons to impeach a judge, if upheld. Judge Boasberg was threatened with impeachment by the President (no less) for simply doing his job and making a judgement that the president did not happen to like. If you actually care about having an independent justice system – as opposed to having courts that obey the leader like they do in China – you have to make a distinction.
I come from an advanced Scandinavian country, and they are fairly agreeable places, unless you hold strident opinions that 95% of the population loathe – or you are prone to give N**i salutes. Denmark, for one, has one of the toughest immigration policies in Western Europe, all done democratically and by consensus. It does give them some problems with the International Court of Human Rights, but neither political side is seriously trying to change it, since it is clearly the ‘will of the people’.
A functioning democracy requires the different groups to commit to keeping the system working, and not to do things or take powers that would make it unworkable, or that you would not want the other side to use against you. And to accept that you cannot get what you want unless you can get enough people to vote for it. The ‘Flight 93 election’ article reads like a man who sees he cannot get what he wants in a democracy under the rule of law, and so has decided that democracy and the rule of law are his enemies and must be neutralised. Is that how your lot think?
I think Justice John Roberts was right to speak out when the president of the United States said of judge James Boasberg in a tweet: “This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President” and “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”
Those are strong words. And John Roberts used measured tones when asked for comment about the calls for impeachment of judges: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Donald Trump was asked on Fox News about John Roberts’s words, and didn’t seem bothered by them. If anything, he seemed to back off a bit.
That’s good. I think Donald Trump needs to calm down and slow down. There’s no need to rush. Let the legal process play out. James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order, not an injunction. Those are just designed to preserve the status quo to prevent irreparable injury before a hearing can be held, so they automatically expire after 14 days and usually are ended sooner, after only a few days. And he had scheduled a hearing sooner that would have addressed the issue within days.
From what I’ve seen, Donald Trump was way out of line in deporting the alleged gang members in the face of James Boasberg’s order (and then lying about it when he did). Many of the men deported were not members of a gang, and were condemned to the inhumanity of an El Salvadorean prison only for the “crime” of having vaguely gang-like tattoos. Even those that were gang members are not enemy aliens — we are not at war with Venezuela so the decrepit law from 1798 Donald Trump said applied did not apply. We are a country of laws, and these deportations were lawless.
What the Democrats did in the past to call for impeaching judges was wrong, but that is water under the bridge. We can’t change the past, so what matters is what we do now, and in the future. The president should never call for a judge to be impeached for his rulings. He should never ignore a judge’s order. The judiciary is a check on his power, and he should respect that even if he disagrees with it. The president of the United States has way too much power as it is. Use it wisely, not like this.
Remarkable how your very measured post gets downvoted. It is no surprise that they downvote mine, but that they cannot even tolerate yours?