Samuel Chase

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(b. Somerset County, Md., 17 Apr. 1741; d. Baltimore, Md., 19 June 1811; interred St. Paul's Cemetery, Baltimore), associate justice, 1796–1811. Samuel Chase was the most brilliant of the Supreme Court justices to sit before Chief Justice John Marshall, and was, in some ways, a more impressive figure than the great chief justice himself. Chase signed the Declaration of Independence, served in the Revolutionary War Congress, and was a noted judge on the Maryland bench as well as the federal judiciary, but he is today remembered chiefly as having been the only Supreme Court justice ever to have been impeached. He is usually dismissed by most American historians as nothing but a rabid partisan. He was, study of Chase's opinions reveals, one of the most important political and legal theorists at work in the early republic, and there is still much that can be learned from his work.

In his most widely quoted Supreme Court opinion, Calder v. Bull (1798), Chase explored what might be regarded as the natural law basis for the federal Constitution of 1789. In that case he explained that there were some supra‐constitutional principles that circumscribed any legislature, whether or not such principles had been explicitly spelled out in the written fundamental law. Chase gave only two examples in his opinion: making a person judge and party in his or her own case, and taking A's property and giving it to B without any compensation to A. But his work has been taken to have established the doctrine now referred to as “substantive due process,” the reading into the Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause guarantees of particular rights or liberties not expressly found elsewhere in the Constitution, rights or liberties generally drawn from some sort of conception of natural law theory.

This sort of approach to constitutional law, recently favored by many advocates of “liberal” constitutional theory, has always been opposed in our history by judicial conservatives, who have maintained that “strict construction” or “original intent” is a more certain guide to appropriate constitutional interpretation. Curiously, however, Chase is also one of the founders of the “strict constructionist” approach. In one of his most notable opinions while riding circuit, United States v. Worrall (1798), Chase became the only late eighteenth‐century Federal judge to reject the theory of the “federal common law of crimes,” the doctrine that the federal government, as a matter of self‐defense, could punish crimes such as bribery or seditious libel even before Congress prohibited such particular conduct by means of a specific statute (see Federal Common Law). Chase's view on this point was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court in the early nineteenth century.

Riding on circuit, Chase also established in his opinions the principle of judicial review to declare unconstitutional acts of Congress void, the principle later famously brought to national attention in Marshall's opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803). Marshall was reported to be in the audience during one occasion when Chase discussed judicial review on circuit in Virginia and to have adopted some of Chase's language (which was itself probably borrowed from Alexander Hamilton's Federalist, no. 78) for use in Marbury.

Chase was a political as well as a judicial conservative and found himself impeached by the Jeffersonians as a result of having presided over several criminal trials and proceedings in which he sought to implement the Adams administration's attempts to silence what it believed to be destructive and dangerous attacks on the government by rebels and mendacious critics. Chase also unsuccessfully sought to convince John Marshall that some of the Jeffersonian usurpations should be ruled unconstitutional and reversed. The event that triggered his impeachment occurred during the early years of Jefferson's administration, however, when Chase delivered to a Baltimore grand jury a charge critical of the Jeffersonians' abolition of several federal judgeships and their conduct in the Maryland legislature. Chase warned that such conduct violated constitutional guarantees of an independent judiciary as well as political principles that insisted that law be undergirded with morality, and morality with religion. Chase's grand jury charge borrowed heavily from the philosophy of Edmund Burke, with whom Chase had spent a fortnight on a trip to England, and warned that unthinking Democratic Jeffersonian advocates of the “rights of man” were plunging the country in the direction of mobocracy.

Jefferson and his followers sought to silence Chase by the impeachment proceedings. The best lawyers among the Adams Federalists immediately enlisted in Chase's defense, agreeing to work for no fees. At Chase's trial before the Senate in 1805, the impeachment charges were effectively shown to be little more than politically motivated calumny. With the votes of some Jeffersonians in his favor, Chase's opponents failed to muster the needed two‐thirds majority of the Senate to convict him, and Chase was acquitted. John Marshall played a rather disappointing role at the trial, refusing to do much in Chase's defense, and even suggesting, contrary to his reputation as a great defender of judicial review, that perhaps Congress ought to be the only arbiter of the constitutionality of its own acts.

Historians usually point to the failure of the Senate to remove Chase as a victory for judicial independence and as having established the precedent that a judge could not be removed merely as a result of the stating of political views from the bench. More correctly, however, the proceeding ought to be seen as establishing the principle that it was dangerous for a judge such as Chase to articulate political philosophy, particularly one at odds with the prevailing Democratic ethos of the Jeffersonians. The trouble Chase was confronted with must have had much to do in convincing John Marshall that he should seek to have the judiciary portrayed as somehow different from and above “politics” and led to the convenient constitutional‐law fiction that there are “objective” answers to constitutional questions. In our own time, when this view is no longer tenable, and, in particular, as conservatives search for a reasoned constitutional philosophy emphasizing responsibilities over rights, the Burkean beliefs of Chase might be due for an impressive resurgence. There is even a chance that future scholars will begin to accord Chase the recognition he deserves and raise the man most now only perceive as a rabid partisan to his proper place in the judicial pantheon, one very possibly at the level of Marshall himself.

Bibliography

• Robert Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (1990).
• Stephen Presser, The Original Misunderstanding: The English, the Americans, and the Dialectic of Federalist Constitutional Jurisprudence, Northwestern University Law Review 84 (1989): 106–185

— Stephen B. Presser

Samuel Chase (1741-1811), American politician and member of the early U.S. Supreme Court, was the most controversial of the founders of the American Republic.

Samuel Chase was born on April 17, 1741, in Somerset County, Md. He was educated, primarily in the classics, by his father, the Rev. Thomas Chase, until 1759, when he began the study of law; 2 years later he was admitted to practice. In 1762 he married Anne Baldwin. He was a member of the assembly (1764-1784) from Annapolis, where he resided until moving to Baltimore (1786).

A Force for Independence

An early and active opponent of the British crown, Chase led the tumultuous demonstrations of the Sons of Liberty against the Stamp Act. After the Boston Tea Party controversy in 1774, he was a member of the Maryland Committee of Correspondence and a delegate to the First Continental Congress. The following year he returned to Philadelphia for the Second Continental Congress and served in the Maryland Convention and Council of Safety. In the congresses he was among the most active and zealous and was instrumental in causing the Maryland Legislature to change its instructions to its congressional delegation so as to vote for independence. John Adams described Chase in Congress as "violent and boisterous" in debate and "tedious upon frivolous Points." So violent were his attacks on a fellow delegate who was unenthusiastic about independence that his victim retired from Congress. Chase's own patriotism was questioned when Alexander Hamilton (under the pen name "Publius") revealed that Chase had taken advantage of knowledge gained in Congress to try to corner the flour market. Temporarily retired from national politics, Chase remained a dominant figure in Maryland politics.

In 1784 Chase was married again, this time to Hannah Kilty Giles. Through the years he had diversified his business interests to include involvement in confiscated coal and iron lands. In 1789, however, he declared insolvency. He was concerned in drafting the Mount Vernon Agreement of 1785, which settled differences on the Potomac between Maryland and Virginia, but it might be a mistake to see this as a step toward nationalism; and Chase's attitude toward the Constitution bears this out. He was not a delegate to Philadelphia, but under the name "Caution" he assailed the document as undemocratic and voted against ratification. His faction, however, was easily outvoted. Ironically, in view of his later actions, he proposed amendments protecting freedom of press and trial by jury. He was appointed to state judgeships in 1788 and 1791, and his holding of dual offices and his overbearing manner on the bench almost led to his ouster.

Member of the Supreme Court

In the Continental Congress, Chase had helped thwart opponents of Gen. Washington, and when Chase's name was suggested for Federal office in 1795, the President may have remembered this support. Washington first considered appointing Chase attorney general but in 1796 selected him for the Supreme Court, in place of the resigned John Blair. The fact that Chase had converted to Federalism lends credence to the assumption that his democratic opposition to the Constitution was another instance of his demagoguery.

In the first 5 years on the Supreme Court he delivered several precedent-making opinions. In Hylton v. United States, 1796, he defined direct taxation much more satisfactorily than would be done by the Court 99 years later. In Ware v. Hylton, also 1796, he effectively asserted the supremacy of treaties over state law, and 2 years later in Calder v. Bull he provided the textbook definition of expost facto laws. He summed up differing attitudes on judicial review in Cooper v. Telfair. An important circuit opinion was his ruling in United States v. Worrall that Federal courts lacked jurisdiction over common-law crimes.

Impeachment Proceedings

Chase, however, is best remembered for the contentious behavior that he carried to the bench. He advocated passage of the Sedition Act and then acted almost like a prosecutor, especially in the case of James T. Callender. At the second treason trial of John Fries, Chase's action was so high-handed as to lead to a boycott of his Court by Philadelphia lawyers. The "hanging judge," as the Republican press called him, campaigned vigorously for President Adams in 1800 and probably reached the peak of judicial impropriety on May 2, 1803, when he delivered a blistering tirade against democracy and the Jefferson administration, while making a jury charge. This action prompted the Jeffersonians to impeach him, and he was tried but not convicted in 1805, despite intense pressure from Jefferson, the Senate taking a narrow interpretation of the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" of Article III of the Constitution. chase's conviction might well have been followed by the impeachment of Justice John Marshall, but impeachment became a dead letter with Chase's trial, although the prospect may have served to curb the justices' political activities.

Chase was often absent his last 10 years on the bench due to gout, and his productivity was far less than that of his first 5 years. His stormy life ended on June 19, 1811.

Further Reading

There is no biography of Chase. Philip A. Crowl, Maryland during and after the Revolution: A Political and Economic Study (1943), provides useful background material, as does the biography of one of his closest friends, Luther Martin of Maryland, by Paul S. Clarkson and R. Samuel Jett (1970). The volumes in preparation on the history of the Supreme Court by Julius Goebel and Gerald A. Gunther will supersede existing works.

Additional Sources

Elsmere, Jane Shaffer, Justice Samuel Chase, Muncie, Ind.: Janevar Pub. Co., 1980.

Stormy patriot: the life of Samuel Chase, Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1980.

• Born: Apr. 17, 1741, Somerset County, Md.
• Education: tutored by father; studied law in an Annapolis, Md., law office
• Previous government service: Maryland General Assembly, 1764–84; Continental Congress, 1774–78, 1784–85; Maryland Convention and Council of Safety, 1775; judge, Baltimore Criminal Court, 1788–96; chief judge, General Court of Maryland, 1791–96
• Appointed by President George Washington Jan. 26, 1796; replaced John Blair, who resigned
• Supreme Court term: confirmed by the Senate Jan. 27, 1796, by a voice vote; served until June 19, 1811
• Died: June 19, 1811, Baltimore, Md.

Samuel Chase was a patriot in the American revolutionary war. He belonged to the Sons of Liberty and signed the Declaration of Independence.

Justice Chase wrote several important opinions in early key decisions of the Supreme Court. In Ware v. Hylton (1796), for example, he helped to establish the supremacy of federal treaties over state laws that contradicted them. In Hylton v. United States (1796), Chase and the Supreme Court made a judgment about whether or not an act of Congress, the carriage tax of 1794, agreed with the Constitution. The Court supported the federal statute, which was its first judgment about the constitutionality of an act of the legislative branch of government. The Court, however, neither asserted or discussed the power of judicial review, which was established by Chief Justice John Marshall in Marbury v. Madison (1803).

Justice Chase was a harsh public critic of the Jeffersonian Republicans because he disagreed with their interpretations of the Constitution. When Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, Chase sharpened his criticism of Jefferson and the Republican majority in Congress. In return, President Jefferson urged that Chase be removed from the Supreme Court. A majority of the House of Representatives voted to impeach Chase. As provided in the Constitution, the case went to the Senate for trial, where two-thirds of the Senators had to vote against Chase to remove him from office. Chase argued that he had done nothing wrong and that a federal judge should not be impeached and removed from office for criticizing the President. Chase was acquitted and remained on the Court until his death in 1811.

See also Hylton v. United States; Impeachment; Ware v. Hylton

Sources

• James Haw et al. Stormy Patriot: The Life of Samuel Chase (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1980)

Samuel Chase served as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1796 to 1811. In 1804 the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Chase. However, the Senate did not uphold the House's action and Chase continued to serve on the Court until his death. Chase remains the only justice who has been the subject of impeachment proceedings. Chase's decisions set several precedents for the Supreme Court, among them opinions establishing the supremacy of federal treaties over state laws and the establishment of judicial review, which is the Court's power to void legislation it deems unconstitutional, a power that makes the judiciary one of the three primary branches of the federal government (the other two branches being Congress and the president).

Known for his fiery and partisan manner, Chase was an active politician for most of his life. Before his career as a judge Chase served in the Maryland colonial and state legislatures. As a member of the Continental Congress in the 1770s, Chase was an outspoken advocate of American independence from Britain. He signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. He opposed the Constitution as an Anti-Federalist (an opponent of federal government powers over the states) in the 1780s. Later, however, he became a member of the Federalist party and as a Supreme Court justice helped establish the powers of the federal judiciary. Chase generally favored a strong government ruled by an elite and he opposed the radical ideas of the French Revolution.

Chase was born April 17, 1741, in Somerset County, Maryland. His father, Thomas Chase, was a British-born clergyman of the Church of England. His mother, Matilda Walker Chase, died at Chase's birth. In 1744 the family moved to Baltimore where Chase grew up and received a classical education under his father's supervision. Chase studied law in Annapolis, Maryland, at the office of Attorney John Hall from 1759 until he was admitted to the bar in 1763. In 1762 Chase married Ann Baldwin. They had seven children, three of them dying in infancy. Ann died sometime between 1776 and 1779 and in 1784 Chase married Hannah Kitty Giles, with whom he had two daughters.

Chase established a successful law practice in Annapolis, the colonial capital and later the state capital of Maryland. He also became prominent in colonial politics. In 1764 he was elected to the lower house of Maryland's colonial legislature as a representative of Annapolis and by the early 1770s he had become well-known as a skillful legislator and outstanding leader, earning the nickname the Maryland Demosthenes after the ancient Greek orator and politician. He represented Maryland in the Continental Congresses from 1774 to 1778 and 1784 to 1785 and in 1778 served on as many as thirty committees in his tireless efforts to advance the cause of independence from Britain. He advocated a boycott of Britain and a political confederation of the colonies. He denounced those who opposed such policies as "despicable tools of power, emerged from obscurity and basking in proprietary sunshine." Together with Benjamin Franklin and Charles Carroll, Chase traveled in 1776 to Montreal in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Canada to join the American colonies in their revolt against England. He signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and worked for its acceptance in Maryland.

Chase helped draft the Maryland Constitution in 1776. He served in the Maryland House of Delegates for all but a year and a half between 1777 and 1788. When the U.S. Constitution came before the Maryland Convention for ratification Chase was in the minority of delegates who voted against it. He was an ardent Anti-Federalist at the time and argued that the Constitution concentrated power in the hands of the central government at the expense of the common individual. "I consider the Constitution," he wrote to a friend, "as radically defective in this essential: the bulk of the people can have nothing to say to it. The government is not a government of the people." He also argued that the Constitution failed to protect the freedom of the press and the right to trial by jury.

His opposition to the Constitution cost him his state legislative seat in 1788. The same year, Chase also went bankrupt after several of his speculative business ventures failed. These business risks had also damaged his political career, which had been plagued with charges that he used his office for personal gain. In 1778 he had been dismissed from the Continental Congress for two years for allegedly attempting to corner the flour market and profit from speculation on prices.

Dogged by bankruptcy and charges of corruption, Chase sought refuge in the position of a local judge in Baltimore County in 1788. In 1791 he was concurrently appointed chief judge of the Maryland General Court. The state assembly, upset with his behavior on the bench and his holding two positions as judge, tried unsuccessfully to remove him from both positions.

Chase might seem to have been an unlikely choice for a Supreme Court justice. However, President George Washington nominated him to the Supreme Court on January 26, 1796. Over the years Washington had been impressed by Chase's legal skills; he also admired the zeal with which Chase had worked for American independence during the Revolutionary War as well as Chase's efforts in support of Washington in the Continental Congress. James McHenry of Maryland, the secretary of war and a friend of Washington's, strongly recommended Chase to Washington. Moreover, the Supreme Court was not very powerful or prestigious at the time and it was difficult to find a lawyer who would accept a position on it. The job did not pay well and justices had to travel long distances to preside over circuit courts.

Chase took his seat on the Court on February 4, 1796. He was an Anti-Federalist at the time of the Constitution's ratification but during his tenure on the Court he became a persuasive advocate for the federal judiciary's power to review legislation. Two cases from Chase's first session on the Supreme Court— Hylton v. United States, 3 U.S. (Dall.) 171, 1 L. Ed. 556, and Ware v. Hylton, 3 U.S. (Dall.) 199, 1 L. Ed. 568, both decided in March 1796— stand out. In Hylton v. United States, the Court for the first time reviewed a law passed by Congress. Although the Court refrained from declaring its ability to void acts of Congress on constitutional grounds, its review nevertheless paved the way for Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137, 2 L. Ed. 60 (1803), which established the right of the Court to declare laws unconstitutional. At issue in Ware v. Hylton was whether a treaty decided by the federal government could take precedence over state laws. The U.S. government had made a treaty with Great Britain following the Revolutionary War that provided for the payment of debts owed to Great Britain. The states, meanwhile, had passed their own laws on this issue, many of which enabled U.S. citizens to forgo repaying their debts to British citizens. John Marshall, future chief justice of the Court, argued the case before the Court for the debtors. The Court ruled that the national treaty had precedent over state law. Of Chase's opinion in this case, constitutional scholar Edward S. Corwin wrote in 1930 that it "remains to this day the most impressive assertion of the supremacy of national treaties over State laws."

In Calder v. Bull, 3 U.S. (Dall.) 386, 1 L. Ed. 648 (1798), Chase wrote a highly influential opinion for the Court. He defined a constitutional interpretation of ex post facto laws—that is, retroactive laws, or laws that affect matters occurring before their enactment. Chase decided that the Constitution's prohibition of such laws extended only to criminal statutes that make prior conduct a crime, not to civil statutes. Chase also set a precedent by arguing that any law "contrary to the great first principles of the social compact" must be declared void. In his opinion, Chase emphasized that the Constitution limits the ability of legislators to disturb established property rights even when it does not expressly set forth such rights. Described by Presser as the natural-law basis of the Constitution, this argument broadened the Court's ability to test the constitutionality of legislation.

In United States v. Callender, Chase's Trial 65, Whart. St. Tr. 668, 25 F. Cas. 239, No. 14, 709 (C.C. Va.) (1800), Chase further defined the powers of the Court when he ruled that a jury could not decide the constitutionality of a law:

[T]he judicial power of the United States is the only proper and competent authority to decide whether any statute made by congress (or any of the state legislatures) is contrary to, or in violation of, the federal constitution…. I believe that it has been the general and prevailing opinion in all the Union, that the power now wished to be exercised by a jury, belongs properly to the Federal Courts.

Chase also found himself embroiled in highly publicized political controversy for his actions both on and off the bench. For example, he made partisan speeches in 1796 for John Adams, the Federalist party candidate for president, even after he had taken the position of Supreme Court justice. He also pushed for passage of the Alien and Sedition Act, 1 Stat. 596 (1798), which outlawed "false, scandalous, and malicious" attacks on the government, the president, or Congress. The law was designed largely to discourage criticism of President Adams by the rival Democratic-Republican party, whose most well-known leader was Thomas Jefferson. In circuit court decisions in 1799 and 1800 Chase imposed harsh sentences on Democratic-Republicans who had published opinions critical of Adams's Federalist administration. In several cases Chase worked to keep Anti-Federalists off juries. In the case of John Fries of Pennsylvania, a strong supporter of Jefferson who had led rebellions against federal excise taxes, Chase sentenced the accused to death. President Adams subsequently set aside the sentence.

In 1800 the political atmosphere in Washington, D.C., changed when Jefferson defeated Adams for the presidency of the United States. In 1803 Chase got into trouble with the Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans when he severely criticized their policies in front of a Baltimore grandjury. Chase explained that he objected to recent changes in Maryland law that gave more men the privilege of voting. Such changes as these advanced by Democratic-Republicans, Chase exclaimed, would

rapidly destroy all protection to property, and all security to personal liberty, and our Republican Constitution [would] sink into mobocracy, the worst of all possible governments…. The modern doctrines by our late reformers, that all men in a state of society are entitled to enjoy equal liberty and equal rights, have brought this mighty mischief upon us, and I fear that it will rapidly destroy progress, until peace and order, freedom and property shall be destroyed.

This angered Jefferson and other Democratic-Republicans and in 1804 the U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Chase on charges of misconduct and bias in the sedition cases and of seditious criticism of Jefferson in the 1803 Baltimore grand jury charge. In 1805, the Democratic-Republican-controlled U.S. Senate moved to impeach Chase. Democratic-Republican senators charged that Chase had been guilty of judicial misconduct and that his partisan acts showed that he lacked political objectivity. Federalists defending Chase argued that he had committed no crime and that he could not be convicted under the constitutional definition of high crimes and misdemeanors. The Senate failed to achieve the two-thirds majority necessary to impeach Chase and he remained on the Court until his death.

Chase's acquittal set an important precedent for the Court—no Supreme Court justice could be removed simply because of his or her political beliefs. The failure to impeach Chase allowed Chief Justice Marshall to assert and define the powers of the Court in future decisions with more confidence. It was thus a step in the process of defining the independence of the Supreme Court as one of the three primary branches of U.S. government.

Chase avoided controversy in his subsequent work on the Court. His near impeachment served as a warning both to him and to other justices to be careful in their choice of words while in office. As Chase suffered in later years from declining health, Marshall became the most vocal justice and assumed Chase's position as the lightning rod for the Court.

Chase died June 19, 1811, in Baltimore. He was interred in St. Paul's Cemetery.

This article is about the Supreme Court justice. For the U.S. Congressman, see Samuel Chase (congressman).

Samuel Chase
Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court
In office February 4, 1796 – June 19, 1811
Nominated by	George Washington
Preceded by	John Blair
Succeeded by	Gabriel Duvall
Born	April 17, 1741(1741-04-17) Somerset County, Maryland
Died	June 19, 1811 (aged 70) Baltimore, Maryland
Political party	Federalist
Religion	Episcopalian
Signature

Samuel Chase (April 17, 1741 – June 19, 1811) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court and earlier was a signatory to the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Maryland. Early in life, Chase was a "firebrand" states-righter and revolutionary.^[1] His political views changed over his lifetime and in the last decades of his career he became well-known as a staunch Federalist, and was impeached for allegedly letting his partisan leanings affect his court decisions. Chase was acquitted.

Contents 1 Youth and early career 2 Family and personal life 3 Career in Annapolis 3.1 Continental Congress 4 Judicial career 4.1 Impeachment 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

Youth and early career

Samuel was the only child of the Reverend Thomas Chase (c. 1703-1779) and his wife, Matilda Walker (?-by 1744), born near Princess Anne, Maryland.^[2]

His father was a clergyman who immigrated to Somerset County to take up a new pulpit. Samuel was educated at home. He was eighteen when he left for Annapolis where he studied law under attorney John Hall.^[2] He was admitted to the bar in 1761^[3] and started a law practice in Annapolis. It was during his time as a member of the bar that his colleagues gave him the nickname of "Old Bacon Face."^[4]

Family and personal life

In May 1762, Chase married Ann Baldwin, daughter of Thomas Baldwin and his wife Agnes. Samuel and Anne had had three sons and four daughters, with only four surviving to adulthood.^[2]

In 1784, Chase traveled to England to deal with Maryland's Bank of England stock, where he met Hannah Kitty, daughter of Samuel Giles, a Berkshire physician. They were married later that year and had two daughters.^[2]

Career in Annapolis

In 1762, Chase was expelled from the Forensic Club, an Annapolis debating society, for "extremely irregular and indecent" behavior.^[2] This was only the first of the major controversies to surround his life.

In 1764, Chase was elected to the Maryland General Assembly where he served for twenty years.^[3]

In 1769 he started construction of the mansion that would become known as the Chase-Lloyd House, which he sold unfinished in 1771. The house is now a National Historic Landmark.

He co-founded Anne Arundel County's Sons of Liberty chapter with his close friend William Paca as well as leading opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act.^[2]

Continental Congress

From 1774 to 1776, Chase was a member of the Annapolis Convention. He represented Maryland at the Continental Congress, was re-elected in 1776 and signed the United States Declaration of Independence.^[3]

He remained in the Continental Congress until 1778. The involvement of Chase in an attempt to corner the flour market, using insider information gained through his position in the Congress, resulted in his not being returned to the Continental Congress and damaging his reputation.

Judicial career

In 1786, Chase moved to Baltimore, which remained his home for the rest of his life. In 1788, he was appointed Chief justice of the District Criminal Court in Baltimore and served until 1796. In 1791, he became Chief Justice of the Maryland General Court, again serving until 1796.^[3]

On January 26, 1796, President George Washington nominated Chase as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Chase served on the Court until his death on June 19, 1811.^[3]

Impeachment

President Thomas Jefferson was determined to seize control of the judiciary from the hands of Federalists. His allies in Congress abolished lower courts, which removed Federalist judges despite their lifetime appointments. Chase had to be impeached and Jefferson launched the process from the White House when he wrote to Congressman Joseph Hopper Nicholson of Maryland asking: "Ought the seditious and official attack [by Chase] on the principles of our Constitution . . .to go unpunished?".^[5]

Virginia Congressman John Randolph of Roanoke took up the challenge and took charge of the impeachment. Chase was served with eight articles of impeachment by the House of Representatives in late 1804, one of which involved Chase's handling of the trial of John Fries. Two more focused on his conduct in the political libel trial of James Callender. Four articles focused on procedural errors made during Chase's adjudication of various matters, and an eighth was directed to his “intemperate and inflammatory … peculiarly indecent and unbecoming … highly unwarrantable … highly indecent” remarks while "charging" or authorizing a Baltimore grand jury. The Jeffersonian Republicans-controlled United States Senate began the impeachment trial of Chase in early 1805, with Vice President Aaron Burr presiding and Randolph leading the prosecution.

All the counts involved Chase's work as a trial judge in lower circuit courts. (In that era, Supreme Court justices had the added duty of serving as individuals on circuit courts, a practice that was ended in the late 19th century.) The heart of the allegations was that political bias had led Chase to treat defendants and their counsel in a blatantly unfair manner. Chase's defense lawyers called the prosecution a political effort by his Republican enemies. In answer to the articles of impeachment, Chase argued that all of his actions had been motivated by adherence to precedent, judicial duty to restrain advocates from improper statements of law, and considerations of judicial efficiency.

The Senate voted to acquit Chase of all charges on March 1, 1805, and he returned to his duties on the court. He is the only U.S. Supreme Court justice to have been impeached.^[3]

The impeachment raised constitutional questions over the nature of the judiciary and was the end of a series of efforts to define the appropriate extent of judicial independence under the Constitution. It set the limits of the impeachment power, fixed the concept that the judiciary was prohibited from engaging in partisan politics, defined the role of the judge in a criminal jury trial, and clarified judicial independence. The construction was largely attitudinal as it modified political norms without codifying new legal doctrines.^[6]

The acquittal of Chase — by lopsided margins on several counts — set an unofficial precedent that many historians say helped ensure the independence of the judiciary. As Chief Justice William Rehnquist noted in his book Grand Inquests, some senators declined to convict Chase despite their partisan hostility to him, apparently because they doubted that the mere quality of his judging was grounds for removal. Furthermore, federal judges became much more cautious in avoiding the appearance of political partisanship.^[7]

References

1. ^ "Samuel Chase, Freedom Firebrand" (html). Delmarva Heritage Series by Dr. William H. Wroten, Jr.. Salisbury Times. March 23, 1959. http://nabbhistory.salisbury.edu/resources/wroten/wroten_schase.html. Retrieved 2008-05-26. 
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "Chase, Samuel (1741- 1811)" (html). Maryland Online Encyclopedia (MdOE). Maryland Online Encyclopedia, a joint project of the Maryland Historical Society, the Maryland Humanities Council, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and the Maryland State Department of Education. 2005. http://www.mdoe.org/chasesamuel.html. Retrieved 2007-12-05. 
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f} "Samuel Chase" (html). The Supreme Court Historical Society. http://www.supremecourthistory.org/02_history/subs_timeline/images_associates/007.html. Retrieved 2007-12-05. 
4. ^ "Marbury v. Madison: Nail-Biting Drama?" (html). Legalities, ABC News Blog. http://blogs.abcnews.com/legalities/2009/02/marbury-v-madis.html. Retrieved 2009-08-27. 
5. ^ Jerry W. Knudson, "The Jeffersonian Assault on the Federalist Judiciary, 1802-1805: Political Forces and Press Reaction," American Journal of Legal History 1970 14(1): 55-75; Richard Ellis, "The Impeachment of Samuel Chase," in American Political Trials, ed. by Michael R. Belknap (1994) pp 57-76, quote on p. 64.
6. ^ Keith E. Whittington, "Reconstructing the Federal Judiciary: The Chase Impeachment and the Constitution," Studies in American Political Development 1995 v9#1: 55-116.
7. ^ Richard Lillich, "The Chase Impeachment," American Journal of Legal History 1960 4(1): 49-72.

Further reading

• Abraham, Henry J. (1992). Justices and Presidents: A Political History of Appointments to the Supreme Court (3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-506557-3. 
• Cushman, Clare (2001). The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies, 1789–1995 (2nd ed.). (Supreme Court Historical Society, Congressional Quarterly Books). ISBN 1568021267. 
• Frank, John P. (1995). Friedman, Leon; Israel, Fred L.. eds. The Justices of the United States Supreme Court: Their Lives and Major Opinions. Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 0791013774. 
• Hall, Kermit L., ed (1992). The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195058356. 
• Haw, James; F. F. Beirne, R. S. Jett (1980). Stormy Patriot: the Life of Samuel Chase. Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society. ISBN 0938420003. 
• Martin, Fenton S.; Goehlert, Robert U. (1990). The U.S. Supreme Court: A Bibliography. Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Books. ISBN 0871875543. 
• Papenfuse, Edward C (July 1, 1987). Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature. 2 Vol. Set. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801835704. 
• The Impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase.
• Urofsky, Melvin I. (1994). The Supreme Court Justices: A Biographical Dictionary. New York: Garland Publishing. pp. 590. ISBN 0815311761. 

External links

• ColonialHall.com: Samuel Chase
• Samuel Chase, Freedom Firebrand - Delmarva Heritage Series
• Samuel Chase at Find a Grave
• Oyez Project, Supreme Court media, Samuel Chase.
• Samuel Chase, Supreme Court Historical Society.

Legal offices
Preceded by John Blair	Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1796-1811	Succeeded by Gabriel Duvall

v • d • e Signers of the Declaration of Independence J. Adams • S. Adams • Bartlett • Braxton • Carroll • Chase • Clark • Clymer • Ellery • Floyd • Franklin • Gerry • Gwinnett • Hall • Hancock • Harrison • Hart • Hewes • Heyward • Hooper • Hopkins • Hopkinson • Huntington • Jefferson • F. Lee • R. Lee • Lewis • Livingston • Lynch • McKean • Middleton • L. Morris • R. Morris • Morton • Nelson • Paca • Paine • Penn • Read • Rodney • Ross • Rush • Rutledge • Sherman • Smith • Stockton • Stone • Taylor • Thornton • Walton • Whipple • Williams • Wilson • Witherspoon • Wolcott • Wythe

Supreme Court of the United States

The Ellsworth Court Chief Justice: Oliver Ellsworth (1796–1800) 1796–1798: Wm. Cushing | J. Wilson | J. Iredell | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase 1798–Feb 1799: Wm. Cushing | J. Iredell | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase Feb–Oct 1799: Wm. Cushing | J. Iredell | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase | B. Washington Oct 1799–Apr 1800: Wm. Cushing | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase | B. Washington Apr–Dec 1800: Wm. Cushing | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase | B. Washington | A. Moore The Marshall Court Chief Justice: John Marshall (1801–1835) 1801–1804: Wm. Cushing | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase | B. Washington | A. Moore 1804–1806: Wm. Cushing | Wm. Paterson | S. Chase | B. Washington | Wm. Johnson 1807–1810: Wm. Cushing | S. Chase | B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd 1810–1811: S. Chase | B. Washington | Wm. Johnson | H.B. Livingston | Th. Todd

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