Just learned about this moments ago. United States District Judge Manuel Real is taking senior status on November 4, 2018. He received his commission from LBJ on November 3, 1966, so he has logged fully 52 years on the Central District of California (effective the day before his senior date). As a senior judge, he can continue to hear either a full or reduced level of cases, although I would assume he will be reducing his caseload.
While Real is currently the long serving federal judge in active status, Judge William Joseph Nealon of Pennsylvania, appointed by Kennedy, is still the longest serving federal judge overall.
If you look at his Wikipedia article posted above, Real has had some, shall we say, “issues” over the years, including abusive behavior and behavior that could conceivably rise to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors”. Republicans actually opened impeachment investigations, but eventually declined to move forward.
Impeachment is hard and without a “smoking gun” is implausible. Successful impeachments, such as against Judge Kent, have consumed much of the House of Representatives time and much of the Senate’s time holding the impeachment trial.
All recent successful impeachments started with a recommendation by the United States Judicial Conference that the judge be impeached, such as with Kent. In Real’s case, no such recommendation was made and Congress did not want to make the effort, with little likelihood of success.
So if they wouldn’t try to impeach Real, who most likely committed a high crime and misdemeanor, they aren’t going to try the politically motivated impeachments some posters have suggested.
