Opinion of the court. lected and the principle deduced, that when the record shows that the court has proceeded without notice to the party condemned, the judgment will be void, and may be disregarded in any collateral proceeding. Mr. A. G. Riddle and W. A. Cook, contra. Mr. Justice FIELD delivered the opinion of the court. In 1867, the plaintiff was a member of the bar of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, and the defendant was one of the justices of that court. In June, of that year, the trial of one John H. Suratt, for the murder of Abraham Lincoln, was commenced in the Criminal Court of the District, and was continued until the tenth of the following August, when the jury were discharged in consequence of their inability to agree upon a verdict. The defendant held that court, presiding at the trial of Suratt from its commencement to its close, and the plaintiff was one of the attorneys who defended the prisoner. Immediately upon the discharge of the jury, the court, thus held by the defendant, directed an order to be entered on its records striking the name of the plaintiff from the roll of attorney's practicing in that court. The order was accompanied by a recital that on the second of July preceding, during the progress of the trial of Suratt, immediately after the court had taken a recess for the day, as the presiding judge was descending from the bench, he had been accosted in a rude and insulting manner by the plaintiff, charging him with having offered the plaintiff a series of insults from the bench from the commencement of the trial; that the judge had then disclaimed any intention of passing any insult whatever, and had assured the plaintiff that he entertained for him no other feelings than those of respect, but that the plaintiff, so far from accepting this explanation, or disclaimer, had threatened the judge with personal chastisement. The plaintiff appears to have regarded this order of the Criminal Court as an order disbarring him from the Supreme Court of the District; and the whole theory of the ་ Opinion of the court. present action proceeds upon that hypothesis. The declaration in one count describes the Criminal Court as one of the branches of the Supreme Court, and in the other count represents the order of the Criminal Court as an order removing the plaintiff from the office of an attorney-at-law in the Supreme Court of the District. And it is for the supposed removal from that court, and the assumed damages consequent thereon, that the action is brought. Yet the Criminal Court of the District was at that time a separate and independent court, and as distinct from the Supreme Court of the District as the Circuit Court is distinct from the Supreme Court of the United States. Its distinct and independent character was urged by the plaintiff, and successfully urged, in this court, as ground for relief against the subsequent action of the Supreme Court of the District, based upon what had occurred in the Criminal Court. And because of its distinct and independent character, this court held that the Supreme Court of the District possessed no power to punish the plaintiff or account of contemptuous conduct and language before the Criminal Court, or in the presence of its judge. By this decision, which was rendered at the December Term of 1868,* the groundwork of the present action of the plaintiff is removed. The law which he successfully invoked, and which protected him when he complained of the action of the Supreme Court of the District, must now equally avail for the protection of the defendant, when it is attempted to give to the Criminal Court a position and power which were then denied. The order of the Criminal Court, as it was then constituted, was not an order of the Supreme Court of the District, nor of one of the branches of that court. It did not, for we know that in law it could not, remove the plaintiff from the office of an attorney of that court, nor affect his right to practice therein. This point is distinctly raised by the special plea of the defendant, in which he sets up that at the time the order * Ex parte Bradley, 7 Wallace, 364. Opinion of the court. complained of was made, he was regularly and lawfully holding the Criminal Court of the District, a court of record, having general jurisdiction for the trial of crimes and of fences arising within the District, and that the order complained of was an order of the Criminal Court, made by him in the lawful exercise and performance of his authority and duty as its presiding justice, for official misconduct of the plaintiff, as one of its attorneys, in his presence; and upon this plea the plaintiff joined issue. The court below, therefore, did not err in excluding the order of removal as evidence in the cause, for the obvious reason that it did not establish, nor tend to establish, the removal of the plaintiff by any order of the defendant, or of the court held by him, from the bar of the Supreme Court of the District. And the refusal of the court below to admit evidence contradicting the recitals in that order, could not be the ground of any just exception, when the order itself was not pertinent to any issue presented. Nor is this conclusion affected by the act of Congress passed in June, 1870, nearly three years after the order of removal was made, and nearly two years after the present action was commenced, changing the independent character of the Criminal Court and declaring that its judgments, decrees, and orders should be deemed the judgments, decrees, and orders of the Supreme Court of the District.* If the order of removal acquired from this legislation a wider scope and operation than it possessed when made, the defendant is not responsible for it. The original act was not altered. It was still an order disbarring the plaintiff only from the Criminal Court, and any other consequences are attributable to the action of Congress, and not to any action of the defendant. But this is not all. The plea, as will be seen from our statement of it, not only sets up that the order of which the plaintiff complains, was an order of the Criminal Court, but that it was made by the defendant in the lawful exercise and performance of his authority and duty as its presiding 16 Stat. at Large, 160. Opinion of the court. justice. In other words, it sets up that the order for the entry of which the suit is brought, was a judicial act, done by the defendant as the presiding justice of a court of general criminal jurisdiction. If such were the character of the act, and the jurisdiction of the court, the defendant cannot be subjected to responsibility for it in a civil action, however erroneous the act may have been, and however injurious in its consequences it may have proved to the plaintiff. For it is a general principle of the highest importance to the proper administration of justice that a judicial officer, in exercising the authority vested in him, shall be free to act upon his own convictions, without apprehension of personal consequences to himself. Liability to answer to every one who might feel himself aggrieved by the action of the judge, would be inconsistent with the possession of this freedom, and would destroy that independence without which no judiciary can be either respectable or useful. As observed by a distinguished English judge, it would establish the weakness of judicial authority in a degrading responsibility.* The principle, therefore, which exempts judges of courts of superior or general authority from liability in a civil action for acts done by then in the exercise of their judicial functions, obtains in all countries where there is any wellordered system of jurisprudence. It has been the settled doctrine of the English courts for many centuries, and has never been denied, that we are aware of, in the courts of this country. It has, as Chancellor Kent observes, “a deep root in the common law."t Nor can this exemption of the judges from civil liability be affected by the motives with which their judicial acts are performed. The purity of their motives cannot in this way be the subject of judicial inquiry. This was adjudged in the case of Floyd and Barker, reported by Coke, in 1608, where it was laid down that the judges of the realm could not be drawn in question for any supposed corruption im * Justice Mayne, in Taaffe v. Downes, reported in a note to 3d Moore's Privy Council, 41. Yates v. Lansing, 5 Johnson, 291. 12 Coke, 25. Opinion of the court. peaching the verity of their records, except before the king himself, and it was observed that if they were required to answer otherwise, it would "tend to the scandal and subversion of all justice, and those who are the most sincere, would not be free from continual calumniations." The truth of this latter observation is manifest to all persons having much experience with judicial proceedings in the superior courts. Controversies involving not merely great pecuniary interests, but the liberty and character of the parties, and consequently exciting the deepest feelings, are being constantly determined in those courts, in which there is great conflict in the evidence and great doubt as to the law which should govern their decision. It is this class of cases which impose upon the judge the severest labor, and often create in his mind a painful sense of responsibility. Yet it is precisely in this class of cases that the losing party feels most keenly the decision against him, and most readily accepts anything but the soundness of the decision in explanation of the action of the judge. Just in proportion to the strength of his convictions of the correctness of his own view of the case is he apt to complain of the judgment against him, and from complaints of the judgment to pass to the ascription of improper motives to the judge. When the controversy involves questions affecting large amounts of property or relates to a matter of general public concern, or touches the interests of numerous parties, the disappointment occasioned by an adverse decision, often finds vent in imputations of this character, and from the imperfection of human nature this is hardly a subject of wonder. If civil actions could be maintained in such cases against the judge, because the losing party should see fit to allege in his complaint that the acts of the judge were done with partiality, or maliciously, or corruptly, the protection essential to judicial independence would be entirely swept away. Few persons sufficiently irritated to institute an action against a judge for his judicial acts would hesitate to ascribe any character to the acts which would be essential to the maintenance of the action. |