Court Opinion

ID: 9424276
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:11:05.345548+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:49.321105
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas joins,
dissenting.
Fully concurring in the dissent of my Brother Douglas in this case, I wish to add a few words to emphasize once again1 the gravity of the unconstitutional wrong the Court is inflicting upon United States District Judge Stephen Chandler, and, more important, on our system of government and the Constitution itself. The preparation and adoption of that great document was a turning point in the history of this country and of the world. Our Constitution gave new hopes and dreams for freedom and equal justice to citizens of this country and signaled to the suffering and oppressed people everywhere that government could be humane. One of the many factors which gave birth to these new dreams and hopes was our constitutional plan for a more independent judicial system than had ever before existed. Judges in our system were to hold their offices during “good Behaviour,” their compensation was not to be “diminished during their Continuance in Office,”2 and they were to be removed only after impeachment and trial by the United States Congress. While judges, like other people, can be tried, *142convicted, and punished for crimes, no word, phrase, clause, sentence, or even the Constitution taken as a whole, gives any indication that any judge was ever to be partly disqualified or wholly removed from office except by the admittedly difficult method of impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by two-thirds of the Senate. Such was the written guarantee in our Constitution of the independence of the judiciary, and such has always been the proud boast of our people.
I am regrettably compelled in this case to say that the Court today, in my judgment, breaks faith with this grand constitutional principle. Judge Chandler, duly appointed, duly confirmed, and never impeached by the Congress, has been barred from doing his work by other judges. The real facts of this case cannot be obscured, nor the effect of the Judicial Council’s decisions defended, by any technical, legalistic effort to show that one or the other of the Council’s orders issued over the years is “valid.” This case must be viewed for what it is — a long history of harassment of Judge Chandler by other judges who somehow feel he is “unfit” to hold office. Their efforts have been going on for at least five years and still Judge Chandler finds no relief. What is involved here is simply a blatant effort on the part of the Council through concerted action to make Judge Chandler a “second-class judge,” depriving him of the full power of his office and the right to share equally with all other federal judges in the privileges and responsibilities of the Federal Judiciary. I am unable to find in our Constitution or in any statute any authority whatever for judges to arrogate to themselves and to exercise such powers. Judge Chandler, like every other federal judge including the Justices of this Court, is subject to removal from office only by the constitutionally prescribed mode of impeachment.
*143The wise authors of our Constitution provided for judicial independence because they were familiar with history; they knew that judges of the past — good, patriotic judges — had occasionally lost not only their offices but had also sometimes lost their freedom and their heads because of the actions and decrees of other judges. They were determined that no such things should happen here. But it appears that the language they used and the protections they thought they had created are not sufficient to protect our judges from the contrived intricacies used by the judges of the Tenth Circuit and this Court to uphold what has happened to Judge Chandler in this case.
I fear that unless the actions taken by the Judicial Council in this case are in some way repudiated, the hope for an independent judiciary will prove to have been no more than an evanescent dream.

 See Chandler v. Judicial Council, 382 U. S. 1003, 1004 (1966) (dissenting opinion).

 Art. Ill, § 1.