V. REMOVAL OF JUDGES

Under the New Hampshire Constitution judges may be removed from office in either of two ways – through the impeachment process or by legislative address. Of the two methods the impeachment process is less subject to partisan abuse. Under Articles 17, 38, and 39 of Part II of the Constitution any officer of the State, including judges, may be impeached by the House of Representatives, tried by the Senate and, upon conviction, removed from office. The only grounds upon which a judge or other official may be impeached are “bribery, corruption, malpractice, or maladministration,” some of which may also be indictable criminal offenses.

Only two judges have ever been impeached in New Hampshire. The first was Woodbury Langdon, an associate justice of the Superior Court of Judicature for six months in 1782 and again from 1786 to 1791. Defiant to the end, Langdon was persuaded to resign his judgeship in 1791 before a none-too-anxious Senate could bring him to trial. Chief Justice David Brock was impeached by the New Hampshire House and acquitted by the Senate in 2000.

Judges may also be removed from office by another, more summary method, known as legislative address. Under the Constitution only two types of office-holders are specifically declared to be removable in this way – judicial (Pt. II, Art. 73) and military (Pt. II, Art. 53).

In the 200 plus years in which the Constitution has been in effect, some 150 civil officers have been removed from office by legislative address. Of this number, sixty-four were judges, fifteen were state executives or administrative officials, and the rest were elected county officers.

Chief Justice Charles Doe, who was one of New Hampshire’s greatest jurists, serving as Chief Justice for twenty years, was both a victim and beneficiary of court change.¹⁸ His own ascension at the age of twenty-nine in 1859 was a result of Republican ascendance (in cooperation with the Know-Nothings/American Party and Free Soilers) which had dismantled the Democratic majorities built by Franklin Pierce, and Levi Woodbury.¹⁹ The Democrats would briefly strike back in 1874, when they won the house, senate, governor’s council, and the corner office.²⁰ Charles Doe was shown the door.²¹ But this Democratic sweep was brief and Doe came back on the wave of the 1876 reorganization. His two years in the political and judicial wilderness paid-off. He was the new Chief Justice of the newly-minted New Hampshire Supreme Court – the Court’s name, and Doe’s towering legacy, have remained ever since.

Remarkably, it wasn’t until ninety years later in 1966 that a constitutional amendment was approved to ensure that judges could only be removed for cause as opposed to politics. Part II, Article 73 now provides that protection.²²