John Adams on Life Tenure and Good Behavior

[Douglas Laycock]

In the op ed attached to his recent post, Scott Gerber quotes John Adams as saying that judges "should hold estates for life in their offices; or, in other words, their commissions should be during good behavior, and their salaries ascertained and established by law." Judges who misused their offices should be impeached by the "house of representatives . . . before the governor and council" and, "if convicted, should be removed."

Scott implies that this is from Adams's Thoughts on Government in 1776, but attribution is not perfectly clear; op eds do not separately footnote every sentence.

I hesitate to reopen a topic that has faded away, but where ever Adams said it, ithis seems to be a clear statement of equivalence between life tenure and good behavior in the usage of the time.
 
Douglas Laycock
University of Texas Law School
727 E. Dean Keeton St.
Austin, TX  78705
512-232-1341
512-471-6988 (fax)
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