impeachment of judges

At this juncture in American history, some of our most hard-fought, state-level political struggles involve control of supreme courts.  New Hampshire witnessed one of the most dramatic of these, culminating in the impeachment of Chief Justice David Brock in 2000. 

In the last decades of the twentieth century, constitutional amendments granted the state’s judiciary a much higher level of independence than it had historically enjoyed.  A bipartisan body of legislators, however, viewed this break from the past with suspicion.  Clashes over court administration and judicial corruption, then a protracted battle over court rulings on educational funding, deepened their antipathy.

When information emerged regarding some of the Chief Justice’s administrative actions, that antipathy exploded into an impeachment crisis.  Brock’s trial was followed by a broad effort to recalibrate legislative-judicial relations in the state.  It also raised significant questions about state-level judicial autonomy, and about impeachment itself as a feature of democratic governance, that resonant far beyond New Hampshire’s borders.

A judiciary power abuse scandal is shaking the whole country. This scandal is the judicial influence-peddling that the National Court Administration under the Chief Justice of Supreme Court of Korea made deals with the government officials in order to establish the Appellate Court and seriously abused the judiciary administration power by contacting the courts dealing with specific trials, making certain requests, inspecting the judges who were critical of the judicial administration, and even suppressing them. After the investigation by the Court, the former Chief Justice and the former National Court Administration Deputy Director were arrested and other judges involved were submitted to a disciplinary measure. Apart from that, however, it is claimed that the judges should be impeached considering the public’s grave distrust of the Judiciary.
Judicial independence and the guarantee of the judges’ status are not the ends per se, but means to an end: fair and impartial adjudication. A fair trial is a cornerstone of the Rule of Law, so the Judiciary therethrough has an obligation to serve the people who delegated the judicial power to the judicial branch. When the judge abuses his/her judicial power or his/her behavior is beyond the purpose of delegation, judicial accountability matters. In this regard, this article explores the institutional significance and distinctiveness of judicial impeachment. And this article explains the grounds and procedures of the impeachment proceeding and then, applies them to the present judiciary power abuse scandal.

Key Words: Impeachment and removal of Judges, judicial impeachment, independence, of the judiciary, judicial independence, judicial accountability, judicial scandal, judicial discipline

El procedimiento de juicio político actual en México, es un proceso establecido desde años atrás el cual si bien es cierto con la evolución de nuestra democracia a sido necesario la aplicación de este a funcionarios que incurren en faltas graves y delitos oficiales, pero es en este caso en particular en que es necesario conocer bien cuales son las manifestaciones, determinantes y efectos del juicio político en cuanto a delitos oficiales, ya que muchas veces funcionarios públicos son llevados al juicio político sin haber cometido un delito oficial y en otros casos estos no son juzgados todo por recomendaciones de alguna fuerza política. Es por ello que debemos conocer bien como funciona el proceso y procedimiento del juicio político tratándose de delitos oficiales.