We watch with alarm the legislative proceedings in West Virginia impeaching all the justices of the Supreme Court of Errors. Not that some of the justices don’t richly deserve their fate, but the overwhelming importance of judicial independence in our democracy, of which we lawyers must constantly remind our elected officials, counsels considerably more caution than the West Virginia politicians have thus far shown.
As usual, one should read the fine print before making decisions. One of the four impeached justices was already under indictment. (The fifth justice pleaded guilty to a crime and resigned in July.) Of the three remaining justices, only one, who resigned shortly after the impeachment vote, is charged with what the headlines are all about: extravagant office redecoration expenses. As we read the fine print we see that the impeachment articles voted against the other two justices, Chief Justice Workman and Justice Walker, are only for not putting policies in place to rein in the spending of all the justices, and, in the case of the Chief Justice, for approving allegedly improper expenses of trial judges when sitting on appeals in place of Supreme Court justices. While Chief Justice Workman’s supervisory role puts her in a more exposed position than that of Justice Walker, we do not believe that their actions rise to the level of impeachable offenses, even though maladministration is one of the causes for impeachment under the West Virginia Constitution.
