Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/248

 240 would create among the senators an habitual confidence, and sympathy with each other; and the same habits would produce a correspondent influence among the judges. There would, therefore, be two distinct bodies, acting together pro re nata, which were in a great measure strangers to each other, and with feelings, pursuits, and modes of reasoning wholly distinct from each other. Great contrariety of opinion might naturally be presumed under such circumstances to, spring up, and, in all probability, would become quite marked in the action of the two bodies. Suppose, upon an impeachment, the senators should be on one side, and the judges on the other; suppose a minority composed of all the judges, and a considerable number of the senators; or suppose a majority made by the co-operation of all the judges; in these, and many other cases, there might be no inconsiderable difficulty in satisfying the public mind, as to the result of the impeachment. Judicial opinion might go urgently one way, and political character and opinion, as urgently another way. Such a state of things would have little tendency to add weight, or dignity to the court, in the opinion of the community. And perhaps a lurking suspicion might pervade many minds, that one body, or the other, had possessed an undue preponderance of influence in the actual decision. Even jealousies and discontents might grow up in the bosoms of the component bodies themselves, from their own difference of structure, and habits, and occupations, and duties. The practice of governments has not hitherto established any great value, as attached to the intermixture of different bodies for single occasions, or temporary objects.

§ 769. A third scheme might be, to entrust the trial of impeachments to a special tribunal, constituted for