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Calls for the impeachment of a federal judge have arisen in response to a decision against a Trump administration policy.
President Donald Trump and his supporters are calling for the impeachment of a federal judge who ordered a halt to the administration’s effort to deport alleged gang members.
How likely is James Boasberg to be impeached? In U.S. history, only 15 federal judges have ever been impeached, with just eight convicted — a rarity that averages out to about one every 14 years.
Dan Urman, director of the law and public policy minor at Northeastern University, breaks down the impeachment process.
Only Congress has the power to remove federal judges from the bench. The process as it pertains to judiciary officials is nearly identical to that of the executive, with the exception being that the chief justice of the Supreme Court doesn’t preside over the proceedings, says Urman, who teaches courses on the Supreme Court.
That means impeachment must begin in the U.S. House of Representatives, where it then follows a course laid out in the Constitution: articles of impeachment are drafted by a majority of members, then sent to the Senate for a vote.
Conviction requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate — a high bar for even the most bipartisan of legislatures, as history attests. “It is extremely rare for federal judges to be impeached in general,” Urman says.
Federal and state constitutions offer different procedures for impeachment, and there have been state-level efforts to impeach judges over disagreements with specific rulings in the last decade, in particular.
The last judge to be convicted in an impeachment trial was Gabriel Thomas Porteous Jr., who was removed from the bench in 2010. Porteous previously served in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
The House voted unanimously to advance four articles: “engaging in a pattern of conduct incompatible with serving as a federal judge, engaging in a longstanding pattern of corrupt conduct, knowingly and intentionally making false statements under penalty of perjury, and knowingly making material false statements about his past to both the Senate and the FBI to obtain a federal judgeship.”
Prior to 2010, the last judge to be removed from office was Walter L. Nixon, formerly with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, in 1989. He was convicted on charges of perjury before a federal grand jury.
The first judge convicted by the Senate was John Pickering, who served with the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, in 1809. He was removed on charges of mental instability and intoxication on the bench.
A full history of judicial impeachments can be viewed at the Federal Judicial Center.
“Out of the number of judges who’ve served in our nation’s history, the number is really, really tiny,” Urman says.
When a judge is acquitted, they can continue to serve in their present appointment.
“It is important to note, though, that judges have been accused of misconduct — they behaved unethically or illegally,” he says. “But they have often resigned, too.”
Given the Republicans’ narrow majority in the Senate, support for the cause in the case of Boasberg, the chief judge of the district court of Washington, D.C., is “highly unlikely,” Urman says.
Boasberg ordered a temporary halt to Trump’s deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, and ordered that officials provide a sealed declaration answering outstanding questions about the deportations, which took place over the weekend.