Thomas Jefferson felt impeachment was "inefficient" in his time

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. . . “scarcely a scarecrow,” Jefferson called impeachment, because of his view that the Judiciary wasn't accountable enough to the people.

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_18s16.html


Did he ever manage to resolve that conflict he saw with the Judiciary and impeachment, in any way?


Jefferson:

"Impeachment is a farce which will not be tried again." --Thomas Jefferson to William B. Giles, 1807


can someone who knows this inside and out explain this to me?

[AndyA]

1. Thomas Jefferson never met George W. Bush or Dick Cheney.

No doubt if Jefferson were alive today, he'd be screaming for impeachment, after seeing what these two have done to his country.

[Rosemary2205]

2. Maybe this will help

I found this. After reading it I can see why Jefferson might think impeachment is a joke. We have not used it very wisely.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/impeach.html

[happyslug]

3. Sounds like his attempt to rein in The Supreme Court.

The First Supreme Court Justice Impeached was Justice Chase (Justice Chase, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Chase) He barley survived the vote the vote in the Senate.

The first person EVER impeached was John Pickering (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pickering) that was viewed as a warm up for Chase's Impeachment. While Pickering was removed, Chase was NOT, and thus Jefferson view that Impeachment was rarely worth the effort.

[pat_k]

4. Read closely -- and beware. . .

. . .Paul Leicester Ford appears to be excerpted with great frequency in Federalist Society circles. The careful selecton of passages out of context, and the twists and turns by which members corrupt the words of the founders to suit their purposes are often breathtaking.

Not to say Ford is guilty of the same, but I would take care when reading any passage or single assertion out of context.

Proposals for the mechanism by which we swiftly remove power from officials who betray our trust ran the gamut at the time -- from putting it into the hands of the judiciary (rejected as too indirect an expression of our will) to swifter political processes akin to a no confidence vote.

Impeachment is the mechanism settled on. Whatever the dissenters may have preferred. Whatever label may be applied to it, it is the means by which we defend against the abuse of power, betrayal of trust, or tyranny of executive or judicial officials we empower to serve us. We defend ourselves by seeking to "disarm" -- i.e., remove the power to corrupt or destroy.

Impeachment is no "farce." Those who think some other way would be better may object to impeachment as they promote an alternative, but to date, we have implemented no alternative. Impeachment is it. It is a power of absolute necessity to maintaining our sovereign authority over those to whom we delegate government powers and duties.

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5. he was struggling with a obstinate Judiciary

who I assume wouldn't allow him to investigate or proceed.

This isn't an attempt to provide some cautionary tale, I just want to know the particulars from someone who knows and could summarize it better than the material I've found. I certainly don't want to do that from my own uninformed perspective.

[pat_k]

6. There are so many on DU.

Someone more familiar with the particulars, and better (or at least quicker) at deciphering meaning from 19th Century philosophical and analytical writings should turn up.

It usually takes me a while to get my head back into the style sufficiently to fully grasp the content.

[Bucky]

7. Jefferson was a great philosopher, but a crappy prognosticator

He was a man of his era, possibly more than any of the "greats" among the Founders. For instance Jefferson thought that the country's interior (meaning from Appalachia to the Mississippi) would still be barely settled 100 generations on. His views on race are downright myopic. When it came to political questions he usually gave his principles a back seat to his own partisan interests. For example he fathered the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions that basically laid out the case for Annulment (the belief that states didn't have to follow any federal laws they didn't agree with).

Jefferson got elected president denouncing the Alien and Sedition Acts (essentially the Patriot Act on steroids), but then turned around and used those same laws once elected to harass his own political opponents. He was a great champion of liberty, but tried to railroad his political opponent Aaron Burr with a trumped up treason trial. (In all likelihood, Burr was up to something unethical when he was arrested, but the case for treason was an exaggeration, at best).

Jefferson is a great source to quote for political theory. How he behaved in office and in particular political controversies was not quite heroic.

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8. sounds familiar - nt