I don’t want this to get political, so let’s keep this to the hypothetical. Let’s say a president is suspected of some heinous crime, maybe he gets caught embezzling money from official accounts or something. The investigation begins and sure enough, it looks like there is enough here to impeach the president. The House votes to impeach. So it goes to the Senate for trial.
But suppose this wrinkle: the Chief Justice died the previous month. The president, knowing his trial is forthcoming, refuses to nominate one. “It says right in the Constitution: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.”
No Chief Justice means no trial means the president can’t be removed.
Is this an ironclad way for a corrupt president to remain in power? If so, it seems like the expedient thing to do for a president in legal trouble to do would be to arrange for the Chief Justice to be assassinated.
Mods- if this belongs in GD, my apologies but it seems more of a factual matter than a debate topic.
When there is no chief justice, the senior-most associate justice serves as Acting chief justice. (28 USC § 3). So the acting chief justice would preside.
What you really need to do is assassinate all the sitting justices before carrying out your evil plot.
The Constitution doesn’t prohibit reappointment of Assoc. Justices to Chief Justice, and according to wikipedia at least, it has been suggested that the Chief Justice be elected by the Associate Justices.
In reality, we’d probably be in an “oh sh!t” situation. I would hope that we’d adopt the same approach we do in every other part of the government by appointing an “acting” Chief Justice (probably the one who has served in the Supreme Court the longest). It seems that rolling down to the practice of using the VP as the presiding official (as we do for other Federal officials) in the trial would invite a pretty healthy dose of conflicted interest…
Of course, technically, the VP should be presiding over his own impeachment, so there’s that. Apparently the founding fathers didn’t anticipate everything…
Suppose, as a hypothetical, that all seats on the Supreme Court were vacant (we’ll assume a terrorist attack on the court building while it was in session). Is there any procedure for judges on lower courts to step up and form an acting Supreme Court? Or would the Supreme Court just not exist until the vacancies were filled?
No, the only way for a SC seat to be filled is through appointment and confirmation. If there are no justices then no cases could be heard. But you really only need one. As soon as an appointment is made and confirmed, that one justice could act as chief justice and start hearing cases.
Trouble is only the president can make an appointment to the court. The only way I can see is for the cabinet to declare the president incompetent and then the VP takes over and can appoint a new chief justice. Whether an “acting chief justice” can fulfill the constitutional role of chief justice is something only the supreme court could resolve.
There’s actually three ways a President can be temporarily removed from office. The first is if the President himself does it. The second is if the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet do it. The third is if the Vice President and some other body designated by Congress (this would probably be Congress itself) does it. The third way is so the President can’t simply pack his cabinet with his cronies and rely of them to keep him in power.
But it’s worth noting that these methods all require either the President or the Vice President to agree. So if the President is killing people off to make sure he stays in power, the Vice President has to go on the list.