Only one Supreme Court justice has faced impeachment: Samuel Chase, justice from 1796 to 1811. A signer of the Declaration of Independence (representing Maryland), Chase faced impeachment precipitated by President Thomas Jefferson’s belief that Chase had shown inappropriate political bias in his rulings as a trial judge in lower circuit courts (a practice required of justices at the time). In 1804 the House of Representatives voted to impeach Chase based on 8 articles of impeachment, but he was acquitted in the Senate the following year.  This precedent is widely considered to have cemented the idea that federal judges should be free from the appearance of partisanship.