[2] In 1804, Chase was impeached by the House of Representatives on grounds of letting his partisan leanings affect his court decisions, but was acquitted the following year by the Senate and remained in office.

After the 1800 elections, President Thomas Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans sought to weaken Federalist influence on the federal courts.

[9] In 1762, Chase was expelled from the Forensic Club, an Annapolis debating society, for "extremely irregular and indecent" behavior.

In an open letter dated July 18, 1766, Chase attacked Walter Dulany, George Steuart (1700–1784), John Brice (1705–1766), and others for publishing an article in the Maryland Gazette Extraordinary of June 19, 1766, in which Chase was accused of being: "a busy, reckless incendiary, a ringleader of mobs, a foul-mouthed and inflaming son of discord and faction, a common disturber of the public tranquility".

[11] He co-founded Anne Arundel County's Sons of Liberty chapter with his close friend William Paca, as well as leading opposition to the 1765 Stamp Act.

[5] On January 26, 1796, President George Washington nominated Chase as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; the U.S. Senate confirmed his appointment the following day.

[3] President Thomas Jefferson, alarmed at the seizure of power by the judiciary through the claim of exclusive judicial review, led his party's efforts to remove the Federalists from the bench.

His allies in Congress had, shortly after his inauguration, repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, abolishing the lower courts created by the legislation and terminating their Federalist judges despite lifetime appointments; Chase, two years after the repeal in May 1803, had denounced it in his charge to a Baltimore grand jury, saying that it would "take away all security for property and personal liberty, and our Republican constitution will sink into a mobocracy.

[17] Jefferson saw the attack as indubitable bad behavior and an opportunity to reduce the Federalist influence on the judiciary by impeaching Chase, launching the process from the White House when he wrote to Congressman Joseph Hopper Nicholson of Maryland, asking: "Ought the seditious and official attack [by Chase] on the principles of our Constitution .

[citation needed] The House of Representatives voted on December 4, 1804 to adopt eight articles of impeachment, one of which involved Chase's handling of the trial of John Fries.

The heart of the allegations was that political bias had led Chase to treat defendants and their counsel in a blatantly unfair manner.

There were 34 senators present (25 Democratic-Republicans and 9 Federalists), and 23 votes were needed to reach the required two-thirds majority for conviction/removal from office.

[5] Judge Alexander Pope Humphrey recorded in the Virginia Law Register an account of the impeachment trial and acquittal of Chase.

It set de facto limits on the impeachment power, fixed the concept that the judiciary was prohibited from openly engaging in partisan politics in the same way, defined the role of the judge in a criminal jury trial, and clarified judicial "independence".

As Chief Justice William Rehnquist noted in his book Grand Inquests, some senators declined to convict Chase despite their partisan hostility to him, apparently because they doubted that the mere "quality" of his judging was grounds for removal.