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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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The process is generally used for criminal/corrupt behavior or failing to do the job (like failing to show up to court, failing to issue opinions, failing to resign when no longer mentally competent for the job). The complete set of arcane procedures are here, I believe.

I don't know whether the process is ever invoked for judges who are "wrong as a matter of law frequently." Often this is the result of a political or philosophical disagreement rather than a failure to do one's job. For example, imagine a conservative district judge pre-Dobbs who consistently holds that Roe was wrongly decided and is not good law, and therefore keeps getting reversed. It may seem that this judge is constantly getting the law "wrong," but in fact he is getting the law "right" and will later be vindicated by Dobbs.

It may seem that this judge is constantly getting the law "wrong," but in fact he is getting the law "right" and will later be vindicated by Dobbs.

This sounds reasonable at first, but if you think about it, the legal system cannot work like that. What this means in practice for users of the system is that if they happen to have bad luck and draw this judge, it just adds an additional useless step to the process, where the superior court will have to overturn. Imagine if appeals court remands the case back to lower court. What will this lower court judge do? Will he rule wrongly again, requiring another appeal? Or will he rule as instructed by superior court in this particular case, but will do the opposite in other cases?

Anyway, my point is that the hierarchical judicial system requires lower courts to defer to rulings and opinions of superior courts. It is normal and reasonable when superior court overrules a lower court because of some mistake or error, but the system cannot maintain the trust and respect of the users where lower courts routinely ignore law and superior precedent.

Regardless, I am not aware of a real-world situation where a federal judge has been consistently "wrong" while otherwise doing his job (i.e. showing up for hearings and issuing orders in a timely fashion). For example, a federal district judge ignoring a direct order from the circuit court would be shocking. Perhaps some examples of this exist, but I am not aware of any, and presumably it would be grounds for disciplinary proceedings.