Impeachment and Its Discontents

What purpose do presidential impeachments serve if the Senate does not convict? Should impeachment be attempted at all if there is no chance of conviction? These questions remind me of the old joke in which someone is asked whether he believes in infant baptism. He replies, “Believe in it? Heck, I’ve actually seen it done.” I am not a fan of failed or futile presidential impeachments; I do not “believe” in them. Nevertheless, I have seen them done three times now. All of this is, in other words, not the sort of purely theoretical construct in which law professors often traffic. As an actual phenomenon – a tangible political fact, not an abstract legal one – failed and futile impeachments need to be analyzed and not just dismissed out of hand. This Article will do that: criticizing failed and futile presidential impeachments, but finding defensible principles at their core and suggesting that censure offers a better way to vindicate those principles. Part II will argue that a presidential impeachment resulting in an acquittal might serve some valid purposes. At best, however, these purposes are greatly diminished by a failed impeachment, and, at worst, they might be disserved entirely. Part III will consider what has driven the House of Representatives in recent decades to become so much more willing to pursue presidential impeachments that are unlikely to succeed. Part IV will conclude by suggesting that the House’s impulses are better served by censure than by futile impeachment

The Constitutional (and Political) Safeguards Against Impeachment

Will the Trump impeachments inspire a flurry of future presidential impeachments? Will the second Trump impeachment, which occurred after the President left office, spur impeachments of lesser, former government officials? These and other questions emerged during the 2022 Missouri Law Review Symposium and on the Senate floor during the Trump impeachment trials. I have argued that we can make an educated prognosis about these possibilities based on constitutional structure. I called this argument the “political safeguards” of impeachment in my recent book, The Impeachments of Donald Trump: An Introduction to Constitutional Argument. What I called political safeguards, invoking the great legal scholar Professor Herbert Wechsler, are easily described as constitutional safeguards. They are political in the sense that they are part of our democracy, and not political in the sense that they are lawless or partisan. In this short Article, I expand on this claim, arguing that these “political” safeguards emerge from what Professor Charles Black called basic constitutional structures and relationships

How Impeachment Works

Presidential impeachments test nearly everyone. Whereas constitutional adjudication largely tests the limits and powers of governmental institutions, presidential impeachments do that and more. They test whether and how members of Congress may fulfill their oaths to do “impartial justice according to the laws and Constitution of the United States;” whether, or to what extent, presidents have abused their powers; how well the American public and media understand the stakes and issues involved in the impeachment process; and to what extent Article III courts refrain from reviewing any aspect of impeachment trials. A popular concern for most observers and commentators during the two impeachments of Donald Trump was that these institutions – particularly Congress, the President, and the media – failed the American people and the Constitution

Assessing the Impeachment of President Bill Clinton from a Post 9/11 Perspective

The impeachment of President Clinton was more a circus than a serious effort to remove the President of the United States. The reason is simple: Few people--in the Congress or the country--wanted to remove him or believed the impeachment effort would actually result in his removal. Instead, it was a partisan political effort to embarrass Clinton and send a message of disapproval. Congress was attaching a scarlet letter. But this was an indulgence that posed considerable danger that few in Congress considered. In particular, few tried to assess the potential impact this use of the process would have on the President\u27s ability to govern and be Commander in Chief. This article will argue that such a frivolous use of the impeachment process is inappropriate and dangerous, especially in a post 9/11 world. The framers of the Constitution had it right; impeachment is a drastic remedy to be invoked only as last resort. This article will compare the Clinton impeachment with the two prior efforts to impeach a president: Andrew Johnson in the 1860\u27s and Richard Nixon in the 1970\u27s. In that comparison, it will note that, unlike the Clinton impeachment, those were serious efforts to remove a president from office, not merely attach a scarlet letter. Finally, it will assess what factors allowed this misuse of the impeachment process and how we can avoid it in the future. It will suggest that the exuberance of the 1990s, the apparent absence of outside enemies at the time, and the security of seats in the House of Representatives (so-called safe legislative seats ) contributed to this nonchalant--and dangerous--attitude toward impeachment. September 11, 2001 changed some of those factors, but not all

Evaluating Congressional Constitutional Interpretation: Some Criteria and Two Informal Case Studies

Syftet med mitt examensarbete är att undersöka hur lärare upplever att arbetar med en metod som riktar sig till elever som har läs- och skrivsvårigheter. Mina frågeställningar berör hur lärare upplever att det är att arbeta med Wittingmetodens ominlärning samt hur de upplever att elevernas syn på sig själva som läsare och skrivare påverkas och slutligen hur de upplever att eleverna påverkas av metoden.   De teoretiska perspektiv som är utgångspunkterna i arbetet är dels specialpedagogiskt perspektiv som berör hur skolan ser på elevers svårigheter samt vilka åtgärder som lämpar sig och dels ett strukturellt perspektiv gällande vad som är goda arbets- och lärmiljöer för elever som har svårigheter med läsning och skrivning. Jag har varit inspirerad av fenomenografisk ansats och den metod jag har valt att använda mig av är kvalitativa halvstrukturerade intervjuer med lärare som arbetat med Wittingmetoden för att hjälpa elever åtgärda sina läs- och skrivsvårigheter. Intervjuerna har sedan analyserats med hjälp av en kvalitativ innehållsanalys som har resulterat i teman.   Resultatet visar att lärarna har en positiv inställning till Wittingmetodens ominlärning och att eleverna utvecklar en medvetenhet om sina styrkor och svagheter, får en starkare tilltro till sin egen förmåga och därmed även ett ökat självförtroende

Be Careful What You Wish For: Impeachment in the Trump Era

Having now gotten some distance and perspective on the head-spinning Trump presidency, what have we learned about the way presidential impeachments are likely to work in the future

A Report Card on the Impeachment: Judging the Institutions That Judged President Clinton

Reflecting on the impeachment and trial of Pres Bill Clinton, Bloch considers how well the impeachment process worked and what was learned from the experience that might be a guide in the event of another impeachment in the future. Any critique of the impeachment process should begin with the independent counsel statute