THE END OF JUDICIAL INDEPENDENCE

One of America's greatest achievements could disappear overnight.

- ANNE APPLEBAUM

In December 1761, King George III dispatched an order to the American colonies. In a recent defiance of convention, some American colonial judges had been appointed for life, the same tenure that British judges enjoyed. Now the king intended to make it clear that all colonial judges were to serve only "at the pleasure of the crown." A wave of protest engulfed the colonies.

In North Carolina, opponents of the decision spurned the order right up until the outbreak of the Revolution. In New Jersey, the governor disobeyed it and was promptly removed from office. In New York, the colonial assembly continued to argue that judges on its colony's supreme court should have lifetime tenure. New York's acting governor, Cadwallader Colden, who was sympathetic to the king, developed a grudge against the assembly that turned into what one historian called “almost psychopathic rage,” ending with him accusing the legislators of seeking to “obtain a most extensive power over the Minds of the rest of Mankind.” Four years later, a mob angered by unfair taxes, another symbol of arbitrary rule, hanged Governor Colden in effigy, smashed up his coaches, and threw the bits of wood into a huge bonfire on Bowling Green.

Where did these intense feelings about judicial independence come from? A few colonists knew the work of the British political philosopher John Locke or the French essayist Montesquieu, especially their writings on the theory of separation of powers, which gives different branches of government the ability to check and balance one another, preventing any from accruing too much authority. But most people, probably including the mob that burned Governor Colden’s carriages on Bowling Green, wanted independent judges for the same reason they wanted a revolution: instinctive resentment of distant, arbitrary, il legitimate royal power.