The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts.

His political views changed over his lifetime and in the last decades of his career he became well known as a staunch Federalist and was impeached for allegedly letting his partisan leanings affect his court decisions. All the counts involved Chase's work as a trial judge in lower circuit courts. The Jeffersonian Republicans-controlled United States Senate began the impeachment trial of Chase in early 1805 with Vice President Aaron Burr presiding and Randolph leading the prosecution.

Samuel Chase (April 17 1741 – June 19 1811) was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court and earlier was a signatory to the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of Maryland. His political views changed over his lifetime and in the last decades of his career he became well known as a staunch Federalist and was impeached for allegedly letting his partisan leanings affect his court decisions. Early in life Chase was a "firebrand" states-righter and revolutionary.