Impeachment

Impeachment, a procedure for removing government officials for malfeasance or criminal activity, is based on the English process in which the House of Commons brought charges against a powerful aristocrat or government official and the House of Lords conducted the trial and rendered the verdict. Although political motivations almost always underlay impeachments, the proceedings were judicial and significant evidence of wrongdoing was required for conviction. Since impeachment played an important role in the seventeenth‐century struggle between Parliament and the Stuart monarchs, it became identified with liberty against overbearing executive power.

In the American colonies, impeachment was an important weapon in the colonial assemblies' struggles with governors appointed by proprietors or the king. As conflict grew between the colonies and Great Britain, the assemblies used impeachment against royal officials. The framers of the U.S. Constitution made the president, vice president, and “all civil officers of the United States” liable to impeachment for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Under the Constitution, impeachments are brought by the House of Representatives and tried by the Senate. Conviction requires a two‐thirds vote, with punishment confined to removal from office.

Three presidents have been impeached, though none has been convicted by the Senate. In 1868, the House of Representatives impeached President Andrew Johnson for dismissing Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, in violation of the 1867 Tenure of Office Acts and thereby seeking to obstruct Congress's program of Reconstruction. The Senate failed by one vote to convict Johnson. In 1974, the House Judiciary Committee recommended the impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon for obstructing the Watergate investigation, but he resigned before the House voted impeachment articles. In 1998, the House voted articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton for perjury and other charges relating to his efforts to conceal a relationship with a White House intern, but in the Senate trial early in 1999, the vote fell far short of the two‐thirds necessary for conviction.

Altogether, the House of Representatives has voted eighteen impeachments, nearly all of judges. (Members of Congress have not been subject to impeachment since the Senate in 1798–1799 dismissed articles of impeachment brought against Senator William Blount of Tennessee, declaring that a member of Congress was not a “civil officer” liable to impeachment under the Constitution.) The charges have usually involved corruption or serious misbehavior on the bench. One judge was removed for treason during the Civil War. The most significant impeachment of a judge occurred in 1804, when Jeffersonian Republicans brought articles against Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase for abusive partisanship on the bench. Had the impeachment succeeded, the Jeffersonians in Congress and the state legislatures might have moved wholesale impeachments against federal and state judges, completely politicizing the process. However, Chase was acquitted in 1805, confirming the need to prove serious wrongdoing for an impeachment to succeed.

Federal impeachment has devolved largely into a process for maintaining the integrity of the judiciary, whose members serve during good behavior and can be removed in no other way. In the 1980s, the U.S. Judicial Conference, the top rule‐making body for federal courts, established a procedure for referring recommendations for impeachment to Congress. The Senate streamlined impeachment by allowing proceedings before a committee rather than the whole Senate, which votes after the committee reports. State legislatures also continue to utilize impeachment to remove executive and judicial officials primarily for corruption and serious wrongdoing, but not primarily as a check on the abuse of executive power.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Federal Government, Executive Branch: The Presidency; Federal Government, Judicial Branch; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: Senate; Federal Government, Legislative Branch: House of Representatives; Jefferson, Thomas; State Governments.

Bibliography

Peter Hoffer and and N.E.H. Hull , Impeachment in America, 1635–1805, 1984.
Michael J. Gerhardt , The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis, 1996.

Michael Les Benedict