Good Day citizens and welcome to What Would Jefferson do?

Our weekly opportunity to discuss current American events with President Thomas Jefferson,

who is seated across for me now and good day to you, Mr. Jefferson.

Good day to you, Citizen.

Mr. Jefferson, I'd like to speak with you about the Supreme Court.

As you know from personal experience the Supreme Court has vast power.

Too much power in my view.

While I was president, we impeached a Supreme Court justice by the name of Samuel Chase.

He had been giving diatribes against democracy and against the party in power from the

bench, had been instructing jurors on how to respond to cases and had filled his opinions with

innuendo and what are known as arbiter dicta, digressions outside of the main business of the case.

And so we impeached him.

The House of Representatives impeached him.

He was tried in the Senate and acquitted.

And after that I said, this is probably a bungling mechanism to chasten Supreme Court justices, but I felt strongly that at least we had given them a warning that they must make some attempt to embody the will of the people.

They cannot sit outside of the will of the people.

Of course they can check acts of Congress when they think they're unconstitutional,

but they mustn't become a third

political arm of our government. Decisions made by the court while at times

seemingly impersonal can affect millions of American citizens in a very personal way sir yes so in my time

there were six million Americans in your time almost 340 million Americans and in my time six justices in your time nine sat in

isolation and dictated terms for a sovereign people.

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