The recently filed articles of impeachment against federal judges are abnormal
The recent history of impeachment filings demonstrate a dangerous politicization not seen since desegregation.
(Note: I’ll be gratefully exploring the federal lands of great American West next week, so there will be about 10 days without posts, unless I accidentally find a place with internet access. Here’s hoping Trump doesn’t sell off our shared land in the next few days. I’ll be back with some more Project 2025 updates, especially on EPA and Interior.)
We’d have to go back to to the days of segregation to find political and politicized examples of impeachment resolutions against federal judges that are similar to what we are seeing now.
Now that federal court rulings against the Trump administration’s actions are starting to roll in, Trump’s acolytes in the House of Representatives are responding with vitriol and, in a few notable cases, proposals of articles of impeachment. Thus far, articles have impeachment have been filed against:
James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court of DC, who issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from deporting anyone under the Alien Enemies Act. In addition to holding hearings on the merits of the case, Judge Boasberg is currently trying to determine if his order was violated, as deportation flights left the U.S. and landed in El Salvador the night of his order.
Paul Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, who issued a temporary injunction keeping DOGE from further accessing Treasury Department data.
John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court of DC, who issued a temporary restraining order that directed the Trump administration to restore federal health data websites that had been taken down as part of an anti-gender ideology initiative.
Amir Ali of the U.S. District Court of DC, who issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from restricting foreign aid managed by USAID.
Elon Musk has gotten involved by personally donating the maximum amount allowable to the reelection campaigns of vocal supporters of the impeachment resolutions. This is not Musk’s only attempt to influence the judiciary. He’s also donated a boatload (including offers to pay voters) in an attempt to elect a Republican judge to the Wisconsin state Supreme Court, in a special election with so much national political interest that it is considered the first electoral test of approval for Trump’s actions since his inauguration.
The talk of impeaching judges simply because elected representatives do not like their rulings has even elicited remonstration from Chief Justice John Roberts, who said:
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.
This was possibly in direct response to Trump’s Truth Social rant about Boasberg, part of which included, “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ [sic] I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”
All of this conversation about the abnormality of calling for the impeachment of federal judges led me to dig through the congressional records to better understand the recent history of impeachment proposals in the House.
(Side note: I highly recommend spending some time pursuing the proposed resolutions, bills, and amendments that are all helpfully searchable at www.congress.gov. The House of Representatives in particular is a strange place that has seated some strange people, and that quirkiness is evident in the record.)
First, let’s get the process of impeachment roughly clear:
1) A House member files a resolution that includes articles of impeachment, the specific charges of “high crimes or misdemeanors” that the member is accusing the target official of.
2) The House investigates and holds hearings.
3) The House votes. A simple majority of Yeas on any article mean the official has officially been “impeached.”
4) The case moves to the Senate, which holds a trial. A two-thirds majority in the Senate is required to convict.
I read through the articles of impeachment (the paperwork of Step 1, above) filed since 1977, the session of Congress at the start of the Carter administration. I came away with two main conclusions:
The current calls for impeaching federal judges are abnormal. Articles of impeachment have been filed against judges in the past, but often on a bipartisan basis and regarding obvious ethics issues. Proposals for impeachment in general have become much more frequent and politicized in the last few years, especially from Republican House members against Democratic officials.
The filing of articles of impeachment has frequently been used to make a political statement. These filings are not exactly rare—Reagan, H.W. Bush, Clinton, W. Bush, and Trump (2x) all had articles of impeachment filed against them. Clinton was, of course, actually impeached, and Trump was impeached twice in his first administration, but they were acquitted. So, since the end of the Carter administration, only Obama has been able to escape a proposal of an article of impeachment. However, filings of impeachment against judges have been much rarer and more bipartisan (until recently).
Total Impeachment Filings: 1977-now
The first chart below shows the total number of impeachment filings fore each 2-year House session. The columns are colored by whether the filing had all Democratic or Republican cosponsors, or were bipartisan. (A full list of impeachment filings is in small print at the end of this post.)
This chart shows the increase in total impeachment filings as well as their increasingly partisan nature, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. In some years, multiple filings were made against the same person. For instance, in the 2021-2022 Congress, 10 impeachment filings were made against Joe Biden alone. (Five of those were just by Marjorie Taylor Greene!)
The chart also doesn’t give the full story on bipartisanship. Sometimes multiple articles have been filed against the same person that each seem partisan but are together bipartisan. Even this wouldn’t tell a complete story: the resolution against Bill Clinton that ultimately led to his impeachment had no cosponsors so appears “Republican”, but a few Democrats did vote to impeach along with most of their Republican counterparts.
Filings against Judges: 1977-now
A similar chart is provided below, except that it is by judge (or justice) and not by filing. That is, if multiple impeachment filings were issued against one judge in the same congressional session, then I just counted it once. If those filings were collectively bipartisan but maybe not each bipartisan, then I considered filings against that judge to be bipartisan. This chart demonstrates how the current filings stand out against history, both in the their number of judges targets and partisan nature.
The details of the district judge cases:
Note: Democrats also filed impeachment articles against Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas in the 2023-2024 session. Here I focus on the articles against federal district court judges, as they are most comparable to the articles filed already this session.
1977-1981: Frank J. Battisti, William Wayne Justice, Nauman Scott
Frank Battisti: Representative John Ashbrook of Ohio objected to Battisti’s desegregation plan for Cleveland Public Schools (among other things) and filed impeachment articles against the judge three separate times.
William Justice: Judge Justice was hated in Texas for his efforts to enforce desegregation. Representative Ron Paul filed articles of impeachment against him, but later forgot why.
Nauman Scott: Representative Larry McDonald filed articles of impeachment against Judge Scott because of his enforcement of busing to desegregate schools.
1985-1986: Harry E. Claiborne
Judge Claiborne was the first successful impeachment followed by Senate conviction and removal from office since 1936. He had been recently convicted of tax evasion and was serving time in federal prison. His impeachment in the House was unanimous; his trial in the Senate was controversially held by a Senate committee, and he was convicted on three of four articles.
1987-1990: Walter L. Nixon, Jr. and Alcee L. Hastings
Walter Nixon: The first impeachment articles were filed against Judge Nixon in the 1987-1988 Congress, but the effort extended into the next two years. Nixon had recently been convicted of perjury, stemming from lies he told to federal officers regarding his interference in a case involving the son of a business associate. Nixon was impeached unanimously by the House and convicted by the Senate on two of three articles.
Alcee Hastings: Judge Hastings had been tried for conspiracy to elicit a bribe but acquitted. Hastings was impeached by the House (only 3 voted against) and convicted by the Senate, although he was not prevented from holding federal office in the future. Hastings later became a member of the House himself, and issued his own articles of impeachment against Ken Starr.
1993-1995: Robert F. Collins and Robert P. Aguilar
Robert F. Collins: Judge Collins was convicted of bribery and served time in federal prison, yet he did not resign. Consequently, the House issued articles of impeachment, but Collins resigned before the inquiry hearings began.
Robert P. Aguilar: Judge Aguilar was indicted for racketeering and conspiracy involving a union boss and a narcotics trafficker. Articles of impeachment were filed, but the effort was dropped when Aguilar’s conviction was later overturned.
2005-2006: Manuel L. Real
Vague impeachment articles were issued against Judge Real, presumably for alleged corruption and favoritism. The articles allowed investigatory hearings, but the impeachment was ultimately dropped.
2009-2010: G. Thomas Porteous Jr. and Samuel B. Kent
G. Thomas Porteous Jr.: Judge Porteous was impeached by the House (with 0 “Nays”), convicted in the Senate and disqualified from holding federal office (vote 94-2) for egregious ethical violations, including corruption, perjury, and what essentially amounted to bribery (not disclosing gratuities received from lawyers appearing in front of him). The investigation started when the Judicial Conference of the United States notified the House of the violations. The Judicial Conference consists of the Chief Justice of the U.S. as well as chief judges from appeals courts and district courts. Thus, the Porteous impeachment was instigated by his fellow judges.
Samuel B. Kent: Judge Kent had recently been indicted for sexual abuse but pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and agreed to retire. A U.S. Court of Appeals recommended that he be impeached. Kent was impeached by the House on all submitted articles, but he resigned before his trial in the Senate.
2025-2026: James E. Boasberg, Paul Engelmayer, John Deacon Bates, Amir Hatem Mahdy Ali
These four are judges that have issued nationwide injunctive relief against some of the second Trump administration’s actions, described in the opening of this post. It’s immediately evident that so many filings against judges in such a short period of time is highly abnormal.
The submitted impeachment articles against these judges are also abnormal in that they are highly politicized. As you can see above, previous impeachment efforts against federal judges involved specific crimes or egregious ethics violations. We’d have to go back to to the days of segregation to find political and politicized examples of impeachment resolutions against federal judges that are similar to what we are seeing now.
The Boasberg and Engelmayer articles are particularly political:
H. Res. 229 (Boasberg): “did knowingly and willfully use his judicial position to advance political gain while interfering with the President's constitutional prerogatives and enforcement of the rule of law.”
H. Res. 143 (Engelmayer): “demonstrating clear bias and prejudice against the President and the 74,000,000 Americans who voted for him.”
The increasing politicization of impeachment is an alarming trend, especially with regard to judicial impeachment. While impeachment is an important and necessary check that Congress has on the federal judiciary, the threat of impeachment for political reasons could severely rupture the separation of the two branches of government. If Congress threatens impeachment because they merely disapprove of legal decisions—especially when there is no hint of ethical violation and when there are options for appeal—then the possibility arises that Congress can sway judges to rule according to politics, and not according to rule. Even if actual impeachment hearings are unlikely, the invective from members of congress and the veneer of legality the official filings give that invective can lead to a host of awful consequences for the judge, including death threats. The politicization of judicial impeachment is yet another nail in the coffin for the rule of law.
Republicans in the House are aware that impeachment filings stand little chance of success of removing a judge, given the two-thirds majority requirement for conviction in the Senate. So, they are pushing forward a piece of legislation that would prevent district court judges from providing nationwide injunctive relief. That is, under this bill—the No Rogue Rulings Act—district judges would not be able to issue temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions that apply to the whole country.
To this admitted non-lawyer, that seems really weird and arguably unconstitutional (or at least against the spirit of the separation of powers). Federal district court judges (especially of the District of Columbia district court) often hear cases against the federal government in matters that apply to the whole nation. In fact, a district court will be the first federal court to hear a case. While such wide-reaching orders should be issued judiciously—and from what I have heard, they are—they should not be “outlawed.” If injunctive relief can never be given until higher in the appeals chain—perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court—then there is a lot of time for the government to act illegally before being forced to stand down, potentially resulting in untold harm to people.
I was just saying to myself this lawyer is making a truly compelling persuasive informed argument to the court. Then you wrote: "as an admitted non-lawyer" .... As the judge I concur with your presentation and dismiss all the attempts of impeachment regarding the 2025 judges who are issuing legal judgements against the illegal actions of the corrupt Donnie T. administration.