ROWLAND

Saw some of the CT Supreme Court arguments on C-Span last night. (Connecticut is my home state, so I have an emotional -- but not especially intellectual -- connection with the impeachment proceedings against Rowland.) It doesn't seem particularly surprising to me that the court refused to take an expansive view of executive powers, given national-level trends against judicially enforced standards of executive immunity. Plus, impeachment is more of a political procedure than a legal one: the basic authority to impeach lies in the hands of the legislature, and however many "legal" forms it adopts, ultimate impeachment authority partakes more of political than of legal judgment. I don't want to make too much of the distinction, and I'd have to think about this further. At the very least, though, it seems to me that the courts should not spend a lot of time refereeing what is essentially a political dispute. If the executive wants to defy the legislature, he should have to rely on his own political capital, not on the political capital that can be made of a judicial judgment. See the NYT article here.

MORE (Monday): Rowland to resign. Good, institutionally, that the court didn't throw its weight behind him.