Judge Richard Sullivan, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, said in his lifetime four federal judges have been killed in retaliation for their work on the bench. “This is not hypothetical,” Sullivan, who leads a Judicial Conference panel on security issues, told reporters in a news conference this week. The Judicial Conference is a representative body of federal judges that frames policies for courts. “It’s real. It’s happened before. We have to be certain that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
The Federal Judges Association, a voluntary group of more than 1,000 judges across the nation, said the judiciary plays a “critical role in preserving democracy and a law-abiding society.” “Judges must be able to do their jobs without fear of violence or undue influence,” the group said in a written statement to NPR.Investigations
One thing stands out to legal experts: these attacks on judges are coming at a very early stage in the legal process — often, before the Supreme Court weighs in as the final decider. “We have a system of justice that allows for appeals,” Judge Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, told reporters this week. “That’s typically the way it works. Impeachment is not and shouldn’t be a short-circuiting of that process. And so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that.”