> * * * [W]hat legal grounds might exist
> for formal job termination [of tenured
> university faculty]?
Insofar as Churchill is concerned, Colorado's constitution vests in the state university's Board of Regents the authority generally to supervise the university's operation and management and to have exclusive control over the disposition of funds allocated to the university, providing that, in exercising that authority, the Board does not violate other applicable principles of law.
In Churchill's case, these latter principles include (for him, secondarily, although he and his would-be Nemeses will argue about this) the university's compliance or not with its legislatively- and also internally-prescribed (and comparatively detailed) and, because it is a state operated institution, also constitutional "due process" requirements and (primarily) his federally guaranteed First Amendment and corollary state constitutional rights (the latter of course comprising the dispute whether a material reason for his discharge is retaliation against him because of disagreement with his exercise of state/federal constitutionally guaranteed free speech rights and, if so, whether any such violation trumps the claims against him of academic misconduct if those claims are not themselves sustained or overcome in the presently on-going university review process or later in court).
(The "due process" related disputes in Churchill's case are less about timeliness/content of notice and right to confront charges/witnesses, etc., etc., because, as noted, his university provides comparatively quite meticulous protections in these respects, and, instead, concern ancillary issues such as whether "cause" is sufficiently well-defined in/by the categories summarized above or whether what are claimed by his adversaries to be adequate standards for his discharge are themselves unconstitutionally vague in light of the need for their "narrow construction" given what he argues to be law-required deference to the [partially overlapping but also in some ways distinguishable] rights of "free speech" and contractual and quasi-contractual "academic freedom" principles.)
Although under comparatively long-standing/on-going political pressure within the state to abolish or at least limit tenure, which precede the O'Reilly and other media bloviator campaigns against Churchill, his university adheres to granting/recognizing tenure with the standards (if one fairly can call them that) to the effect that, once granted, tenure may revoked only for "cause" as determined in/by "the judgment of the Board of Regents" if the Board relatedly determines that "the good of the university requires such action" which Board may do if it also finds (again, provided if in accordance with its and the university's also prescribed and constitutionally required "due process" and grievance/review procedures) that the tenured faculty member being discharged is guilty of (among other enumerated possible grounds) "demonstrable [and, presumably, therefore, also demonstrated] incompetence" or "neglect of duty" or "insubordination" or "other conduct which falls below minimum standards of professional integrity" (re. which, GoTo/read the [by him: disputed] findings of plagiarism, etc., by the committee assigned to review and recommend what if anything to do about the claims against Churchill and the responses thereto, links to which have been posted here previously).
(Two of Churchill's core "defenses" -- apparently adopted by several posters to this List on the apparent rationalization that his politically motivated critics ought not be rewarded and that that consideration ought overcome whatever if any academic misconduct of which he may be guilty -- are that he does not fail to meet "minimum standards" of academic behavior and integrety bearing in mind That Others Do It (plaigarize, etc.), Too! and, anyway, that his academic misconduct or complained of (whether he plagiarized or deliberately or carelessly [mis]used footnotes, etc.) anyway ought be disregarded on some sort of "laches" or like theory because criticisms of this sort of thing have been long known yet without university action against him until after his not intra-university or academic-publication remarks claimed to be the primarily motivating cause of his suggested discharge; although how/why someone ought be provided on-going tenure at the university level if, at least, he meets "minimum standards" of professional integrity is rarely attempted to be explained in such discussions other than by some sort of, "Don't give in to those Bastards!" slogan.)
> [ I suppose] the main issues that come up are whether
> the behavior of the person was directly related to his
> or her professional competence (politics wouldn't be)
> and the degree to which internal professional proceedings
> are "internal" and not bound by due process requirements.
This is basically correct. However, and as you seem to anticipate, one readily will find (not just in the Colo. state and federal courts) lots and lots of university/college faculty tenure dispute decisions ("I was denied tenure because I'm a woman!" or, "They're firing me on the pretextual 'ground' that I'm guilty of defective scholarship whereas their primarily determining reason is that they don't like my political views!") to the effect that, procedurally, a required approach in determining disputes about such "main issues" include that courts ought adopt and abide by policies of substantial "deference" to the internal workings/procedures of academic institutions provided only that the institutional act complained of is not clearly/provably inconsistent with otherwise applicable principles of law (most notably, federal Tit. VII and its state analogs and the First Amendment and, for state-run colleges/universities, Fifth/Fourteenth and state analog amendment constitutional "due process" guarantees).
Your reading just a sampling of decisions in this connection (and all the more so if you read or participate in many of them) will thus confirm for you that courts generally take a (strongly but rebuttably) presumptively "hands off" attitude to academic tenure grant/denial cases and that, correlatively, one common way they rationalize and implement this approach is to require a comparatively higher standard of allegation and, more importantly, of proof by an allegedly aggrieved faculty member in academic tenure related lawsuits than would be needed to rule that a defendant is liable in, say, a "slip-and-fall" negligence case or commercial breach-of-contract litigation -- e.g., proof not just by "preponderance of evidence" that the university's administration's acts complained of were unlawful and, instead, that they were "clearly" and "convincingly" so or requiring proof that the institution's denial or revocation of tenure decision was a "clear abuse of discretion" (i.e., not just a garden-variety [i.e., not "clear"] such abuse) -- and that the courts typically adopt a variety of other procedural requirements to bolster this aim.
> Does anyone know of any major academic freedom
> cases and how they played out?
Most of the time, the faculty member contesting the denial or revocation of tenure fails to prevail; although it may be (as in the cases, e.g., of some teachers and faculty members discharged in connection with anti-war comments before WW II and during the McCarthy period, there may be [much] later "vindication [of sorts] in the form of, say, fancy "apologies" and maybe even a dinner complete with gold watch given by later university administrations many years later).
These days, when vigorously contested/litigated, as presumably can be expected in the Churchill case, they're often "played out" over a substantial number of years and at a cost of $Millions in lawyers fees and related litigation costs/expenses, assuming that the affected faculty member has or has access to the resources to fight.
(University administrators and trustees seem rarely to feel constrained in spending $Millions to try to vindicate their claims/position in such litigations even when a compromise/settlement might be readily achievable at very substantially lesser dollar cost. Apparently, it a, "Its the Principle, Not the Principal!" [and vice versa] kind of Thing.)
> I'm wondering what legal recourse an academic
> who thought he or she was denied tenure or fired
> because of politics or some issue having nothing
> to do with academic competence would have.
The Colo. courts have ruled comparatively definitively that the "unless otherwise provided by law" qualification in state's constitution to the otherwise broad grant of authority to the Board of Regents viz-a-viz the state univerity subjects state university actions to requirements of, e.g., anti-discrimination provisions of law; and even if they had not so ruled, it is these days hardly disputable reasonably (and, in Churchill's case, his university's administration does not dispute) that, e.g., federal Tit. VII and IX requirements and state law analogs prohibiting job discrimination by reason of race (whatever that means), reasonably accommodatable disability, nationality, (older) age, etc., apply to him. In addition, his attorney claims entitlement to a fairly substantial fee payable by the state/university in Churchill's defense of the on-going intra-university tenure revocation proceeding and it so far appears that neither the university nor its board of regents dispute this element of Churchill's claimed entitlement.
IOW, whether or not they might argue that it is not actually "due" him, they appear to be extending and prepared to continue to extend him lots and lots of "due process" . . . and then perhaps fire him.