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Impeachment in the United States
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Impeachment in the United States is an expressed power of the legislature which allows for formal charges to be brought against a civil officer of government for conduct committed in office. The actual trial on those charges, and subsequent removal of an official on conviction on those charges, is separate from the act of impeachment itself.
Impeachment is analogous to indictment in regular court proceedings, while trial by the other house is analogous to the trial before judge and jury in regular courts.
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Encyclopedia
Impeachment in the United States is an expressed power of the legislature which allows for formal charges to be brought against a civil officer of government for conduct committed in office. The actual trial on those charges, and subsequent removal of an official on conviction on those charges, is separate from the act of impeachment itself.
Impeachment is analogous to indictment in regular court proceedings, while trial by the other house is analogous to the trial before judge and jury in regular courts. Typically, the lower house of the legislature will impeach the official and the upper house will conduct the trial.
At the federal level, Article Two of the United States Constitution (Section 4) states that "The President, Vice President, and all other civil Officers of the United States shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors." The House of Representatives has the sole power of impeaching, while the United States Senate has the sole power to try all impeachments. The removal of impeached officials is automatic upon conviction in the Senate.
Impeachment can also occur at the state level; state legislatures can impeach state officials, including governors, according to their respective state constitutions.
The federal impeachment procedure
The House of Representatives
Impeachment proceedings may be commenced by a member of the House of Representatives on his or her own initiative by either presenting a listing of the charges under oath, or by asking for referral to the appropriate committee. The impeachment process may be triggered by non-members, for example: when the Judicial Conference of the United States suggests a federal judge be impeached; a special prosecutor advises the House of information which he or she believes constitutes grounds for impeachment; by message from the President; or by a charge from a state or territorial legislature or grand jury; or by petition.
The type of impeachment resolution determines which committee it will be referred to. A resolution impeaching a particular individual is typically referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. A resolution to authorize an investigation regarding impeachable conduct is referred to the House Committee on Rules, and then referred to the Judiciary Committee. The House Committee on the Judiciary, by majority vote, will determine whether grounds for impeachment exist. If the Committee finds grounds for impeachment they will set forth specific allegations of misconduct in one or more "articles of impeachment." The Impeachment Resolution, or Article(s) of Impeachment, are then reported to the full House with the committee's recommendations.
The House debates the resolution and may at the conclusion consider the resolution as a whole or vote on each article of impeachment individually. A simple majority of those present and voting is required for each article or the resolution as a whole to pass. If the House votes to impeach, managers are selected to present the case to the Senate. Recently, managers have been selected by resolution, while historically the House would occasionally elect the managers or pass a resolution allowing the appointment of managers at the discretion of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Also, the House will adopt a resolution in order to notify the Senate of its action. After receiving the notice, the Senate will adopt an order notifying the House that it is ready to receive the managers. The House managers will then appear before the bar of the Senate to impeach the individual involved and exhibit the articles against him or her. After the reading of the charges, the managers return and make a verbal report to the House.
Senate
The proceedings unfold in the form of a trial, with each side having the right to call witnesses and perform cross-examinations. The House members presenting the prosecution case, who are given the collective title "managers" during the course of the trial, are allowed full access to the floor of the Senate chamber (a privilege not otherwise given to House members) only for the purposes of the impeachment trial. Senators must also take an oath or affirmation that they will perform their duties honestly and with due diligence (as opposed to the House of Lords in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, who vote upon their honor). The hearing requires a simple majority of the Senators as a quorum. After hearing the charges, the Senate retires to deliberate in private. Conviction requires a two-thirds majority.
The Senate's enters judgment on its decision, whether that be to convict or acquit, and a copy of the judgment is filed with the Secretary of State Upon conviction, the official is automatically removed and may also be barred from holding future office. The removed official is also liable to criminal prosecution. The President may not grant a pardon in the impeachment case, but may use it in any criminal case.
Beginning in the 1980s, the Senate began using "Impeachment Trial Committees" pursuant to Senate Rule XII. These committees presided over the evidentiary phase of the trials, hearing the evidence and supervising the examination and cross-examination of witnesses. The committees would then compile the evidentiary record and present it to the Senate; all senators would then have the opportunity to review the evidence before the chamber voted to convict or acquit. The purpose of the committees was to streamline impeachment trials, which otherwise would have taken up a great deal of the chamber's time. Defendants challenged the use of these committees, claiming them to be a violation of their fair trial rights as well as the Senate's constitutional mandate, as a body, to have "sole power to try all impeachments." Several impeached judges sought court intervention in their impeachment proceedings on these grounds, but the courts generally refused to become involved due to the Constitution's granting of impeachment and removal power solely to the legislative branch, making it a political question.
History
In writing Article II, Section Four, George Mason had favored impeachment for "maladministration" (incompetence), but James Madison, who favored impeachment only for criminal behavior, carried the issue. Hence, cases of impeachment may be undertaken only for "treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors." However, some scholars, such as Kevin Gutzman, have disputed this view and argue that the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" was intended to have a much more expansive meaning (see, for example, Kevin Gutzman's The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution, which has an extensive discussion of this question).
The Congress traditionally regards impeachment as a power to use only in extreme cases; the House of Representatives has actually initiated impeachment proceedings only 62 times since 1789. Two cases did not come to trial because the individuals had left office.
Actual impeachments of only the following 17 federal officers have taken place. Of these, 13 were federal judges: Ten district court, two court of appeals (one of whom also sat on the Commerce Court), and one Supreme Court Associate Justice (Samuel Chase). Of the other four, two were Presidents (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, both acquitted), one was a Cabinet secretary (Secretary of War William W. Belknap, acquitted after he had resigned), and one was a U.S. Senator (William Blount). Of the 17 impeached officials, seven were convicted. One, former judge Alcee Hastings, was elected as a member of the House of Representatives after being removed from office.
The 1799 impeachment of Senator William Blount of Tennessee stalled on the grounds that the Senate lacked jurisdiction over him. Because, in a separate action unrelated to the impeachment procedure, the Senate had already expelled Blount, the lack of jurisdiction may have been either because Blount was no longer a Senator, or because Senators are not "civil officers" of the federal government who are subject to impeachment. No other member of Congress has ever been impeached, although the Constitution does give authority to either house to expel members, which each has done on occasion, effectively removing the individual from functioning as a representative or senator.
Notably, however, expulsion, unlike impeachment, cannot bar an individual from holding future office, as can be seen in the case of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who subsequently won re-election to the very seat from which he had been expelled (see also Powell v. McCormack).
Impeachment of a U.S. President
Two U.S. Presidents have been impeached, Andrew Johnson, and Bill Clinton. Both were acquitted at trial. Ever since Johnson's trial, there has been an established precedent against impeachment of a president solely on political grounds.
Richard Nixon resigned in the face of the near certainty of his impeachment, which had already been approved by the House Judiciary Committee.
During the Senate trial of a President, the Chief Justice of the United States presides.
Federal officials impeached
| # | Date | Accused | Office | Result |
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| 1 | January 14, 1799 | William Blount | United States Senator (Tennessee) | Dismissed1 | | 2 | March 12, 1804 | John Pickering | Judge (District of New Hampshire) | Removed | | 3 | March 1, 1805 | Samuel Chase | Associate Justice (Supreme Court of the United States) | Acquitted | | 4 | January 31, 1831 | James H. Peck | Judge (District of Missouri) | Acquitted | | 5 | June 26, 1862 | West Hughes Humphreys | Judge (District of Tennessee) | Removed | | 6 | May 26, 1868 | Andrew Johnson | President of the United States | Acquitted | | 7 | February 28, 1873 | Mark W. Delahay | Judge (District of Kansas) | Resigned | | 8 | August 1, 1876 | William W. Belknap | United States Secretary of War | Acquitted after his resignation. | | 9 | February 27, 1905 | Charles Swayne | Judge (Northern District of Florida) | Acquitted | | 10 | January 13, 1913 | Robert W. Archbald | Associate Justice (United States Commerce Court)
Judge (Third Circuit Court of Appeals) | Removed | | 11 | November 4, 1926 | George W. English | Judge (Eastern District of Illinois) | Resigned | | 12 | May 24, 1933 | Harold Louderback | Judge (Northern District of California) | Acquitted | | 13 | April 17, 1936 | Halsted L. Ritter | Judge (Southern District of Florida) | Removed | | 14 | October 9, 1986 | Harry E. Claiborne | Judge (District of Nevada) | Removed | | 15 | October 20, 1988 | Alcee Hastings | Judge (Southern District of Florida) | Removed | | 16 | November 3, 1989 | Walter Nixon | Chief Judge (Southern District of Mississippi) | Removed2 | | 17 | December 19, 1998 | Bill Clinton | President of the United States | Acquitted3 | |
Demands for impeachment
While actually impeaching a federal public official is a rare event, demands for impeachment, especially of presidents, are extremely common, going back to the administration of George Washington in the mid-1790s. In fact, most of the 63 resolutions mentioned above were in response to presidential actions.
While almost all of them were for the most part frivolous and were buried as soon as they were introduced, several did have their intended effect. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas both resigned in response to the threat of impeachment hearings, an attempt to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas led by then House Minority Leader Gerald Ford was ultimately unsuccessful, and, most famously, President Richard Nixon resigned from office after the House Judiciary Committee had already reported articles of impeachment to the floor. In January 1843, the House defeated a motion to form a committee of impeachment of President John Tyler by a vote of 84 in favor, 127 against. In addition, the original mandate of the joint committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair was to look for evidence that might have lead to the impeachment of President Ronald Reagan.
In April 2007, Rep. Dennis Kucinich submitted a resolution (Resolution 333) to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Like all resolutions, his resolution was referred to a Committee--in this case, the Judiciary Committee. But the Committee formed no plans to schedule debate, or a hearing, on his resolution, and Cheney succeeded in serving his term to completion, which expired January 20, 2009.
In 2007, a group of Democrats in the U.S. House sought impeachment hearings by the Judiciary Committee against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales ultimately resigned.
On November 6, 2007, the House referred an impeachment motion, Resolution 333, pressed again by Kucinich, against Vice President Cheney to the House Judiciary Committee for further study. The Republicans wanted this motion killed, but Democrats forced them to push the measure into the House Judiciary Committee for further discussion.
On June 9, 2008 Dennis Kucinich delivered 35 articles of impeachment against George W. Bush to the U.S. House of Representatives. But like Cheney, Bush also served his term to completion.
Impeachment in the states
State legislatures can impeach state officials, including governors. The court for the trial of impeachments may differ somewhat from the federal model — in New York, for instance, the Assembly (lower house) impeaches, and the State Senate tries the case, but the members of the seven-judge New York State Court of Appeals (the state's highest, constitutional court) sit with the senators as jurors as well (NYS Constitution, Article VI, §24). Impeachment and removal of governors has happened occasionally throughout the history of the United States, usually for corruption charges. A total of at least eleven U.S. state governors have faced an impeachment trial; a twelfth, Governor Lee Cruce of Oklahoma, escaped impeachment conviction by a single vote in 1912. Several others, most recently Connecticut's John G. Rowland, have resigned rather than face impeachment, when events seemed to make it inevitable. The most recent impeachment of a governor occurred on January 9, 2009. The Illinois House of Representatives voted 114-1 to impeach Governor Rod Blagojevich. The only dissenter was State Representative Deborah Mell, a Democrat and Blagojevich's sister-in-law, who had been sworn into her first term representing Chicago earlier that day. The Illinois House again voted to impeach Blagojevich on January 14, 2009, with a 117-1 vote, with Mell again the lone dissenter. On January 29, the Illinois State Senate, by a vote of 59-0, formally removed Blagojevich from the Office of Governor of the State of Illinois. He was the eighth state governor removed from office, after being impeached and convicted of high crimes, in American history.
The procedure for impeachment, or removal, of local officials varies widely. For instance, in New York a mayor is removed directly by the governor "upon being heard" on charges — the law makes no further specification of what charges are necessary or what the governor must find in order to remove a mayor.
State officials impeached
| Date | Accused | Office | Result |
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| 1804 | William W. Irvin | Associate Judge, Fairfield County, Ohio Court of Common Pleas | Removed | | 1832 | Theophilus W. Smith | Associate Justice, Illinois Supreme Court | Acquitted | | February 26, 1862 | Charles L. Robinson | Governor of Kansas | Acquitted | | February 26, 1862 | John Winter Robinson | Secretary of State of Kansas | Removed on June 12, 1862 | | February 26, 1862 | George S. Hillyer | Auditor of Kansas | Removed on June 16, 1862 | | 1871 | William Woods Holden | Governor of North Carolina | Removed | | 1871 | David Butler | Governor of Nebraska | Removed | | 1872 | Henry C. Warmoth | Governor of Louisiana | "suspended from office," though trial was not held | | 1876 | Adelbert Ames | Governor of Mississippi | Resigned | | 1888 | James W. Tate | Treasurer of Kentucky | Removed | | August 1913 | William Sulzer | Governor of New York | Removed | | 1917 | James E. Ferguson | Governor of Texas | Removed | | October 23, 1923 | John C. Walton | Governor of Oklahoma | Removed | | January 21, 1929 | Henry S. Johnston | Governor of Oklahoma | Removed | | 1929 | Huey P. Long | Governor of Louisiana | Acquitted | | February 8, 1988 | Evan Mecham | Governor of Arizona | Removed on April 4, 1988. | | November 11, 2004 | Kathy Augustine | Controller of Nevada | Censured, not removed from office | | January 14, 2009 | Rod Blagojevich | Governor of Illinois | Removed on January 29, 2009, and declared ineligible to hold public office in Illinois |
See also
External links
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