Disqualification

“ No other prescribed disqualification exists against persons of that or higher rank; the right of challenge being deemed sufficient to secure the forming of a competent, unbiassed, and independent jury. ”

“ This is a universal disqualification of judges under all enlightened systems of justice. The weakness and selfishness of human nature are such that few men are qualified to judge impartially where their own interests are involved.
(6) All relatives of the accused man, of whatever degree of consanguinity, were disqualified from sitting in judgment on his case.
This is only a variation of the disqualification of interest.
(7) No person who would be benefited, as heir, or otherwise, by the death or condemnation of an accused man, was qualified to be his judge. ”

“ But where the disqualification is founded on disloyalty, it is obvious that the public interests might be seriously compromised, if the claimant were allowed any such privilege,—for the disqualification is of substance, and not of form. Disloyalty must not find a seat in the Senate, even for a day; nor can any claimant charged with disloyalty complain that the Senate refuses welcome to its trusts.
The oath required to support the Constitution is on its face an oath of loyalty, and nothing else. ”

“ Disqualifications for service on juries are only created by the law, and the first part of the section is aimed at certain disqualifying laws, namely, those which make mere race or color a disqualification ”

“ It has even been held that a conviction for an infamous offence in one of the States, which works a personal disqualification in the State where the conviction is had, is of no force in another State. ”

“ The deprivation of any rights, civil or political, previously enjoyed, may be punishment, the circumstances attending and the causes of the deprivation determining this fact. Disqualification from office many be punishment, as in cases of conviction upon impeachment. Disqualification from the pursuits of a lawful avocation, or from positions of trust, or from the privilege of appearing in the courts, or acting as an executor, administrator, or guardian, may also, and often has been, imposed as punishment. ”

“ To permit an ex parte affidavit to become in effect a final adjudication of the disqualification of a judge when facts are shown, such as are here established, seems to me to be fraught with much danger to the independent discharge of duties by federal judges, and to open a door to the abuse of the privilege which is intended to be conferred by the statute in question. ”

“ But an attempt to turn the right of election into such a farce and mockery as a fictitious fine and recovery, will, I hope, have another fate; because the laws which give it are infinitely dear to us, and the evasion is infinitely contemptible.
The people indeed have been told, that this power of discretionary disqualification is vested in hands that they may trust, and who will be sure not to abuse it to their prejudice. Until I find something in this argument differing from that on which every mode of despotism has been defended, I shall not be inclined to pay it any great compliment. ”

“ The question here is as to implied bias, a bias attributable in law to the prospective juror regardless of actual partiality. The contention of the defendant is that there must be read into the constitutional requirement an absolute disqualification in criminal cases of a person employed by the government, a disqualification which Congress is powerless to remove or modify. ”

“ Paragraph 4- If one party wants to disqualify the judge his adversary selected through a claim that the judge is a thief or has a familial disqualification, we do not pay attention to his claim, even if he has a witness supporting it. ”

“ Those are the only cases even with an allegation of an absolute disqualification in the case of O’Donovan Rossa and Mitchell, and of a disqualification alleged, but not admitted, and not legal, not statutory, in the case of Wilkes, that I have been able to find; and in Wilkes’s case the House has solemnly decided that it did wrong there, and I submit that it ought not to do it again. ”

“ Honorable party service will certainly not be esteemed by me a disqualification for public office, but it will in no case be allowed to serve as a shield of official negligence, incompetency, or delinquency. It is entirely creditable to seek public office by proper methods and with proper motives, and all applicants will be treated with consideration ”

“ Nothing is more common, than for a free people in times of heat and violence to gratify momentary passions by letting into the government principles and precedents which afterwards prove fatal to themselves. Of this kind is the doctrine of disfranchisement, disqualification, and punishments by acts of the legislature. The dangerous consequences of this power are manifest. ”

“ The basis of the disqualification is that 'personal bias or prejudice' exists, by reason of which the judge is unable to impartially exercise his functions in the particular case. It is a provision obviously not applicable save in those rare instances in which the affiant is able to state facts which tend to show not merely adverse rulings already made, which may be right or wrong, but facts and reasons which tend to show personal bias or prejudice. ”

“ Where the consequence of disqualification so directly affects First Amendment rights, surely we should not conclude that every 'personal reason' is a basis for disqualification in the absence of explicit language to that effect in the statute or decisions of the South Carolina Supreme Court. ”

“ Disqualification follows therefore as a reasonable presumption from such membership and support. Nor is there here a problem of procedural due process. The presumption is not conclusive but arises only in a hearing where the person against whom it may arise has full opportunity to rebut it. The holding of the Court of Appeals below is significant in this regard: 'The statute also makes it clear that * * * proof of such membership 'shall constitute prima facie evidence of disqualification' for such employment. ”

“ Here the constitution seems to make an evident distinction between such misdemeanors as would authorize a removal from office, and disqualification to hold any office, and such as are criminal, in the ordinary sense of the word, in courts of common law, and punishable by indictment. So far as the offence committed is injurious to society, only in consequence of the power reposed in the officer being abused in the exercise of his official functions, it is inquirable into only by impeachment, and punishable only by removal from office, and disqualification to hold any office ”

“ An attempt to fix the boundary between the regions of ability and inability, would much oftener give scope to personal and party attachments and enmities than advance the interests of justice or the public good. The result, except in the case of insanity, must for the most part be arbitrary; and insanity, without any formal or express provision, may be safely pronounced to be a virtual disqualification. ”

“ If any candidate solicits a vote, or if any voter sells his ballot, he will be guilty of a crime; the penalty for either offense shall be disqualification to ever vote again or to ever hold office. Furthermore, the offender shall work for a period of one hundred days in the public fields, clothed in a distinctive black mantle of disgrace. ”

“ Before the end of the century every State except Georgia had abolished the disqualification. [6]
Common-law jurisdictions outside the United States also long ago abolished the disqualification. This change came in England with the enactment in 1898 of the Criminal Evidence Act, 61 & 62 Vict., c. 36. [7] Various States of Australia had enacted competency statutes even before the mother country, as did Canada and New Zealand. Competency was extended to defendants in Northern Ireland in 1923, in the Republic of Ireland in 1924, and in India in 1955. ”

“ The person who has at any time prior to the rebellion held any office, civil or military, under the United States, and has taken an official oath to support the Constitution of the United States, is subject to disqualification. ”

“ Resignation.
A disqualification not only prevents a person from sitting in the House, but is also the only way in which he can voluntarily get out of it. A man cannot resign his seat, and hence the regular method of accomplishing the same result is the acceptance of a disqualifying office. Two or three sinecures are retained for that purpose, the best known being the stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds, a position which the member desiring to leave Parliament applies for, accepts, and immediately gives up. ”

“ We think that it would be far more injurious to permit it to be thought that persons entertaining a disqualifying prejudice were allowed to serve as jurors and that inquiries designed to elicit the fact of disqualification were barred. ”

“ In the cases relied upon by the unions on the other hand, this Court has emphasized that, since the basis of disqualification was past action or loyalty, nothing that those persons proscribed by its terms could ever do would change the result. ”

“ The power of discretionary disqualification by one law of Parliament, and the necessity of paying every debt of the Civil List by another law of Parliament, if suffered to pass unnoticed, must establish such a fund of rewards and terrors as will make Parliament the best appendage and support of arbitrary power that ever was invented by the wit of man. This is felt. The quarrel is begun between the Representatives and the People. The Court faction have at length committed them.
In such a strait the wisest may well be perplexed, and the boldest staggered. ”

“ I do really trust, that, when the matter comes a little to be considered, a majority of our gentlemen will never consent to establish such a principle of disqualification against themselves and their posterity, and, for the sake of gratifying the schemes of a transitory administration of the cockpit or the castle, or in compliance with the lightest part of the most vulgar and transient popularity, fix so irreparable an injury on the permanent interest of their country. ”

“ But officers who during the rebellion discharged official duties not incident to war, but only such duties as belong even to a state of peace and were necessary to the preservation of order and the administration of law, are not to be considered as thereby engaging in rebellion or as disqualified. Disloyal sentiments, opinions, or sympathies would not disqualify, but where a person has by speech or by writing incited others to engage in rebellion he must come under the disqualification. ”

“ Pankow (1993) 16 Cal.App.4th 931, 939-940, 20 Cal.Rptr.2d 841, and cases cited therein.)
Section 170.1, subdivision (a) (6) provides for the disqualification of a judge if “For any reason ... (B) the judge believes there is a substantial doubt as to his or her capacity to be impartial, or (C) a person aware of the facts might reasonably entertain a doubt that the judge would be able to be impartial. Bias or prejudice towards a lawyer in the proceeding may be grounds for disqualification.” ”

“ They shall always carry a chain at the ankle, hanging from the wrists; they shall be employed at hard and painful labor, and shall receive no assistance whatsoever from without the institution.' Arts. 105, 106. There are, besides, certain accessory penalties imposed, which are defined to be (1) civil interdiction; (2) perpetual absolute disqualification; (3) subjection to surveillance during life. ”

“ Whatever power the national or any state government may have had in prescribing the qualification of electors prior to the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment it still has, save that it cannot legally and constitutionally make race or color a ground of disqualification. In other words, whatever qualifications may be prescribed and fixed as a condition precedent to voting, must be applicable to white and colored alike. ”

“ The ultimate question is not whether Congress has changed a common-law rule, but whether, in reason, an absolute disqualification of governmental employees to serve as jurors in criminal cases is essential to the impartiality of the jury. The government stresses the factual situation in the District of Columbia before the enactment of the statute before us. Respondent replies that a large proportion of governmental employees are in any event disqualified because of legal residence elsewhere. ”

“ Of course, no judge should preside if he entertains such actual personal prejudice towards any party and to this obvious disqualification Congress added honestly entertained belief of such prejudice when based upon fairly adequate facts and circumstances. Intense dislike of a class does not render the judge incapable of administering complete justice to one of its members. ”

“ In the majority of the States the punishment for challenging, fighting, or acting as second, is solitary imprisonment and hard labour for any period less than a year, and disqualification for serving any public office for twenty years. ”

“ No complaint is made that any of the grand jurors who found the indictment were disqualified to serve, or were in any respect improper persons. It is only complained that the court excluded some persons for an improper cause; that is, because they labored under the disqualification created by the 820th section of the Revised Statutes, which is alleged to be unconstitutional. ”

“ It is, no doubt, natural that large bodies of men, impatiently suffering under the ban of disqualification, should avail themselves, without much regard to persons or party, of every aid they can muster for their cause, and should (to use the words of an old Earl of Pembroke) "lean on both sides of the stairs to get up." ”