Samuel Chase (1741 - 1811)

Samuel Chase was born in Maryland on April 17, 1741. At 18, he moved to Annapolis to read law. Chase was an early supporter of independence from England. He signed the Declaration of Independence, was the principal draftsman of Maryland's 1776 constitution, and participated on the revolutionary side during the War of Independence. However, Chase was involved in an attempt to corner the flour market in 1778, during the War. He did so while a member of the Continental Congress at a time when the Congress was authorizing the purchase of flour for revolutionary troops. Chase lost his seat, and much of his reputation. Hamilton, who intensely disliked Chase, stated that Chase had "the peculiar privilege of being universally despised." Chase was an Anti-Federalist at the time of the framing and ratification of the Constitution. At some point shortly thereafter, Chase reversed course, and became a staunch supporter of the exercise of federal power and a believer in a structured and differentiated political and social order. Democracy was seen by Chase a "mobocracy." One explanation for Chase’s shift in thinking is that Chase smelled egalitarian revolution in the air. First, the French Revolution, and then the Terror, struck Chase and many others as a harbinger of events to come in the United States. Second, in 1794, in western Pennsylvania, the Whiskey Rebellion occurred. The Rebellion was a result of the federal government's effort to try to collect excise taxes on whiskey distilled in western Pennsylvania, a tax that was despised. The Whiskey Rebellion ended only after Washington sent 15,000 federal troops to the area.

During the late 1780s and early 1790s, Chase served in the Maryland judiciary in a number of posts. Then, in 1796, George Washington nominated Chase to succeed the Virginian John Blair on the Sixth Seat of the Supreme Court. Washington left no written record why Chase was nominated, so Washington's reason for nominating Chase is unknown. Chase's prickly personality attracted  numerous detractors, which made Washington's decision somewhat surprising. Washington may have concerned with geographically balancing the Court (Maryland and Virginia were both part of the south), or may have believed the position was of little importance (which several recent scholars doubt), or may have been looking for a devoted and intelligent Federalist (which Chase, a former Anti-Federalist, undoubtedly was). Chase's first written opinion was in Calder v. Bull (1798). Calder concerned the propriety of an act of the Connecticut legislature overturning a decision of the Connecticut judiciary. The issue before the Court was whether the act violated the ex post facto clause (Art. I, section 9, clause 3) of the Constitution. The members of the Court agreed that the clause applied only to criminal cases. They disagreed, however, concerning the authority of the judiciary to declare void acts that violated "principles of natural justice." In Chase's view, any law that violated those principles was void, whether or not it also violated some textual provision of the Constitution. In Justice James Iredell's view, because the "ideas of natural justice are regulated by no fixed standard," the Court was limited to declaring void only those acts that were contrary to the text of the  Constitution.

Chase is best known, however, as the only Supreme Court Justice to be impeached. After federal judge John Pickering of New Hampshire was impeached and convicted in 1804, Chase was impeached by the House of Representatives, pursuant to a quiet request by President Thomas Jefferson. Chase was impeached for his conduct in several "political" trials and his intemperate remarks to a Baltimore grand jury while riding circuit. In early February 1805, thirty days after he was impeached by the House, he was tried in the Senate. The Senate prosecutor was Jefferson’s and John Marshall’s distant cousin, John Randolph. Randolph was an extremely partisan Republican. He was also an opium fiend who had a vicious tongue. At this time there were 34 senators, 25 Jeffersonian-Republicans and 9 Federalists. If the Senators voted along party lines, Chase was facing conviction. However, in the period between the presentment of the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, and the trial, Randolph assailed Jefferson’s attempted compromise of the Yazoo land fraud (which would not be settled until 1814. The Supreme Court, in an 1810 decision, upheld the sale of 25 million acres of Georgia land to speculators. The sale occurred after nearly the entire Georgia legislature was bribed. The Court held the act of sale by the Georgia legislature was constitutional under either principles of natural law or the contracts clause, Art. I, section 10, clause 1). The Republicans disaffected with Jefferson's efforts to settle the Yazoo land fraud scandal joined with the nine Federalists to block the 2/3 vote necessary to convict Chase. No more than 19 votes were garnered for any of the eight Articles of impeachment. The Article that received that number of votes for conviction concerned Chase’s excoriation of the Baltimore Grand Jury in May 1803.

One conclusion drawn from the acquittal of Chase is the  independence of the Judiciary from legislative interference, for no other Supreme Court Justice has been impeached. Whether conclusion was reached at the time of the acquittal is the subject of considerable debate. Some scholars argue that Chase's behavior was known to be so different from that of Marshall and other Federalist judges that Marshal and others were in no danger of impeachment from the Republican Congress. Others claim that Chase's acquittal was attributable to intervening political events, not a consensus concerning judicial independence. As a result, Federalists on the courts remained concerned about the threat of impeachment. Probably the most important consequence of Chase's impeachment was the understanding that members of the Judiciary were expected to withdraw from the hubbub of partisan politics to the cloister of the judicial chambers. Throughout American history, judges and justices have found themselves in trouble when they are perceived to be involved in ordinary politics. 

Chase remained on the Court until his death in 1811 at age 70.