United States Judiciary Committee

“ The Constitution provides that the President "shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint" Supreme Court Justices and, as established by Congress, other federal judges. Art. II, § 2, cl. 2. Since 1952 the President, through the Department of Justice, has requested advice from the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary (ABA Committee) in making such nominations.
The American Bar Association is a private voluntary professional association of approximately 343,000 attorneys. ”

“ Let it also be recollected, that if the reputation of the judge be at stake, the reputation of this House also is implicated. I consider this House as the constitutional guardians of the morality of the Judiciary. Whenever even suspicion exists as to that morality, a committee of inquiry should be appointed. For the pure administration of justice is surely more important than the reputation of any particular judge. I am sorry my colleague thought it necessary to make any statement of facts to the House. I believe that more important facts than he has mentioned will be stated by witnesses. ”

“ When committees of the House—rather than a grand jury, a Senate committee, or an Independent Counsel—must serve as primary investigators in an impeachment inquiry, they have an obligation to balance investigative needs and best practices for collecting evidence with the President's interest in telling his story and the public interest in transparency. ”

“ The First Judiciary Act conferred such a power on the federal courts in the very act of their establishment, 1 Stat. 73, 83, and of the Judiciary Committee of eight that reported the bill to the Senate, five members including the chairman, Senator, later to be Chief Justice, Ellsworth, had been delegates to the Constitutional Convention. ”

“ These depositions and interviews were conducted consistent with the Rules of the House and with longstanding procedures governing investigations by HPSCI and the other committees. [15] Members of the Minority previously advocated expanding these authorities, explaining that " [t] he ability to interview witnesses in private allows committees to gather information confidentially and in more depth than is possible under the five-minute rule governing committee hearings. This ability is often critical to conducting an effective and thorough investigation." ”

“ It was the kind of attack admirably fitted to prevent any successful attempt to reform abuses of the judiciary, because it gave the champions of the unjust judge their eagerly desired opportunity to shift their ground into a championship of just judges who were unjustly assailed. Last year, before the House Committee on the Judiciary, these same labor leaders formulated their demands, specifying the bill that contained them, refusing all compromise, stating they wished the principle of that bill or nothing. ”

“ The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure do not apply to any of the committee's investigative activities, including transcribed interviews. There are some guidelines we follow, and I'll go over those now.
Our questioning will proceed in rounds. The majority staff will ask questions first for one hour, then the minority staff will have an opportunity to ask questions for an equal amount of time. We will go back and forth until there are no more questions and the interview is over. ”

“ The federal judiciary's recent ruling that White House Counsel Don McGahn must appear before the Judiciary Committee demonstrates that assertions of privileges by the White House do not foreclose the House of Representatives' ability to hear testimony from relevant witnesses. [92] For the price of legitimacy, the Majority is only required to pay a small amount of patience and deference to the courts. ”

“ The House's inquiry was conducted with maximal transparency: transcripts of all interviews and depositions were made public, and HPSCI and the Judiciary Committee held seven days of public hearings. All documentary evidence relied on in HPSCI's report has been made available to President Trump, and much of it has been made public. Furthermore, during proceedings before the Judiciary Committee, President Trump was offered numerous opportunities to have his counsel participate, including by cross-examining witnesses and presenting evidence. ”

“ The President has also typically been afforded an opportunity to participate in the proceedings at a stage when evidence has been fully gathered and is presented to the Judiciary Committee. In addition, the President has been entitled to present his own evidence and to request that witnesses be called. He has not, however, been entitled to have counsel present during all interviews of witnesses. The procedures employed by the House here were tailored to these considerations and provided ample protections for President Trump. ”

“ The Senate Committee on the Judiciary or a duly authorized Subcommittee was authorized [4] to investigate the administration, operation, and enforcement of the Internal Security Act of 1950. [5] The Committee created a Subcommittee which adopted a resolution to the effect that a single member would constitute a quorum for the purpose of taking testimony.
Petitioner was head of the union under investigation. The Chairman issued a subpoena duces tecum directing him to produce, inter alia, the names and addresses of the union members mentioned above. ”

“ The gentleman’s objection, in fact, is one of the strongest arguments in favor of the resolution. The gentleman from South Carolina has, however, offered one other objection to the resolution, which merits some notice. He has said that if a committee is appointed for the object proposed by the resolution, men of character and talents will not accept of appointments in the Judiciary. ”

“ For example, the 1974 resolution authorizing and directing the impeachment inquiry into President Nixon served to clarify the scope of the Committee's subpoena authority and authorized the Committee and its counsel to take depositions. [61] Today, the House Rules for standing committees and for HPSCI already provide these authorities. [62] Thus, as a practical matter, a full vote of the House is no longer needed to provide investigating committees with the kinds of authorities needed to conduct their investigations. Here, of course, the House did ultimately adopt H. Res. ”

“ Nor can we hold that the Act bars use of committee testimony in United States courts but not in state courts. The Act forbids use of such evidence 'in any criminal proceeding * * * in any court'. Language could be no plainer. Even if there could be legislative history sufficiently strong to make 'any court' mean United States courts only, there is no such history. The few scraps of legislative history pointed out tend to indicate that Congress was well aware that an ordinary person would read the phrase 'in any court' to include state courts. ”

“ Pursuant to clause 5 of Rule XVI, the vote on reporting the resolution was divided into separate votes on the articles. The Committee approved Article I (abuse of power) by a rollcall vote of 23 to 17 and it approved Article II (obstruction of Congress) by a rollcall vote of 23 to 17, in each case a quorum being present.
COMMITTEE VOTES
In compliance with clause 3 (b) of rule XIII of the Rules of the House of Representatives, the Committee advises that the following rollcall votes occurred during the Committee's consideration H. Res. ”

“ On the one hand, especially because judges and Justices sometimes must decide issues about which reasonable people disagree, there is an argument that the judiciary must not be entirely independent of the elected branches of government. Some aspects of our system—including not only the appointment and confirmation process, but also Congress’s role in setting the Court’s budget, jurisdiction, and size, and its control of the impeachment process—ensure that the judiciary is not entirely independent but is to some degree responsive to elected officials and therefore to public opinion. ”

“ It is alarming to find so many Members of Congress sworn into the Federal Court at its first sitting in New York. The question then is whether it is proper that Congress should consist of so large a proportion of Members who are sworn attomies in the Federal Courts ; or whether it is prudent to trust men to enact laws who are practising on them in another department. Let common sense answer. If Congress does consist of practising Attorneys, the laws enacted may, in a great measure, depend on the particular causes such individuals may have to manage in the Judiciary ”

“ As noted above, Congress has enacted such legislation with respect to other federal courts. See Resnik Testimony, supra note 4, at 13 (“During the twentieth century, Congress built on constitutional and common law understandings of judicial impartiality and due process to articulate norms for most of the federal judiciary. ... Congress elaborated methods for rulemaking, imposed standards for recusal, mandated term limits on individuals serving as the chief judge of a district and or a circuit court, and instituted a process for complaints to be filed against judges.”) ”

“ It is plain we are not following the Christoffel decision and so I think we should candidly overrule it.
The practice of withholding all objection until time of trial is not helpful in protecting a witness' right to a valid Committee. It prevents correction of any error in that respect and profits only the witness who seeks a concealed defect to exploit. Congressional custom, whether written or not, has established that Committee Members may indulge in temporary absences, unless there is objection, without disabling those remaining from continuing work as a Committee. ”

“ The Bill of Rights, not Congress, establishes the standards which must be observed before people in this country may legally be sent to jail. A congressional committee has the power to compel testimony to aid it in shaping legislation, but it does not have the power merely to publicize a citizen's shortcomings or to aid a State in convicting him of crime. ”

“ The first possibility is that the authorizing resolution itself will so clearly declare the 'question under inquiry' that a witness can understand the pertinency of questions asked him. The Government does not contend that the authorizing resolution of the Un-American Activities Committee could serve such a purpose. Its confusing breadth is amply illustrated by the innumerable and diverse questions into which the Committee has inquired under this charter since 1938. ”

“ The Senators argued that Congress could enact the proposal as part of its power to make exceptions and regulations to the Supreme Court’s appellate jurisdiction. [174] Much like their predecessors in 1869, they pointed out that Congress had long exercised the power to declare how many Justices constituted a quorum and, thus, how many Justices were required to speak for the Court as a whole. Congress could, by extension, direct the Court to decide cases in panels. ”

“ The theory of a committee inquiry is that the committee members are serving as the representatives of the parent assembly in collecting information for a legislative purpose. Their function is to act as the eyes and ears of the Congress in obtaining facts upon which the full legislature can act. To carry out this mission, committees and subcommittees, sometimes one Congressman, are endowed with the full power of the Congress to compel testimony. In this case, only two men exercised that authority in demanding information over petitioner's protest. ”

“ It is impossible that under such circumstances men of talents and integrity will take seats on the bench, when their character shall be liable to be scrutinized without any facts being previously adduced.
I think it absolutely necessary that this resolution should not pass. For if it passes, it will establish a precedent that any member may procure an investigating committee to inquire into the conduct of any executive or judicial officer merely upon his opinion, unsupported by facts, that such an inquiry is necessary. Suppose parties to be nearly equally divided ”

“ Judicial jurisdiction denotes the political entity's power to subject a given person, thing or occurrence to its judicial processes. [4] There is in this case no absence of jurisdiction in any of these basic meanings. Congress has the undisputed power under the Constitution [5] to define the crimes involved in the pending prosecution, the U.S. Attorney's Office has undisputed authority to conduct the prosecution, and the United States (Congress) , beyond doubt, has power to commit the case to adjudication in a court of its creation. ”

“ According to my interpretation of the constitution of the United States, the supreme court is a distinct, aggregate, collective body-one which can act collectively, and in term or in united session only. It cannot delegate its functions, nor can it impose its duties upon any number of the body less than a quorum, constituted of a majority of its members. Much less can a single judge be clothed with its joint powers, to be wielded by him at any time or in any place, or to any extent to which his individual discretion may point. ”

“ The Federalist has remarked, that the reasonableness of the agency of the national courts in cases, in which the state tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial, speaks for itself. No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own cause, or in any cause, in respect to which he has the least interest or bias. This principle has no inconsiderable weight in designating the federal courts, as the proper tribunals for the determination of controversies between different states and their citizens. ”