Legal experts say the comments from other Republican lawmakers are alarming.
“Using impeachment — even talking about impeachment in a serious fashion — as a means to express disagreement with one particular substantive decision is a very dangerous approach to both the structure of government and the rule of law, and a serious threat to the independence of the judiciary,” said Justin Levitt of Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.
Levitt said there are a number of reasonable objections to make to the court’s ruling, including its definition of gerrymandering and the time frame in which it required new maps to be drawn. But, he said, “that’s a standard-issue fight over substance and procedure, not about whether the Justices were defaulting on their obligations to act as Justices.”
Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California at Irvine, similarly said that “it undermines rule of law to impeach judges because you disagree with their decisions.” He suggested that lawmakers concerned about partisanship on the court should consider a “more worthy reform,” such as allowing the state’s Supreme Court justices to be appointed by lawmakers. Right now, they’re elected by voters in “partisan elections.”
And Michael Li, redistricting and voting counsel at New York University’s Brennan Center, said that Pennsylvania Republicans could take partisanship out of redistricting completely by putting the process in the hands of an independent commission. “If Rs really believe this is a bad state supreme court,” he wrote on Twitter, “they should pass the great bipartisan redistricting reform amendment currently before them.”
