Which institution can impeach the president

It should accordingly go without saying that if an impeachment begins when an individual is in office, the process may surely continue after they resign or otherwise depart.

Understandably, members of Congress and the American people might lose the appetite for subjecting a president to impeachment once he has left office for good. But that is a political choice not a constitutional directive. A president who leaves office and retains the potential to return someday should still be subject as well to the unique processes set forth in the Constitution to sanction his abuse of his office.

To haul a former president back before the tribunal of Congress when it has uncovered misconduct makes eminent sense when the only permissible sanctions might be those that the Constitution provides. That misconduct invariably calls for a special remedy, and the Constitution provides that in disabling the president who has committed such misconduct of ever being able again to serve as president or any other federal office and continuing to benefit financially from his time as president.

Presidents are not above the law, not when they are in office, and not when they leave office. Michael J. Gerhardt is the author of six books, including leading treatises on impeachment, appointments, presidential power, Supreme Court precedent, and separation of powers. Follow him on Twitter MichaelGerhard8.

Gerhardt January 8, Signups for A. There was no need of definition, for it was left to the House as exhibitors, and the Chief Justice and the Senate as judges of the articles, to apply well-understood terms, mutatis mutandis , to new circumstances, as the exigencies of state, and the ends for which the Constitution was established, should require. The subject-matter was new; the President was a new officer of state; his duties, his relations to the various branches of government and to the people, his powers, his oath, functions, duties, responsibilities, were all new.

In some respects, old customs and laws were a guide. In others, there was neither precedent nor analogy. But the common-law principle was to be applied to the new matters according to their exigency, as the common law of contracts and of carriers is applied to carriage by steamboats and railroads, to corporations and expresses, which have come into existence centuries since the law was established. They are broad enough to cover all criminal misconduct of the President, — all acts of commission or omission forbidden by the Constitution and the laws.

Nor was, nor is, there any just reason why it should be restricted in this direction; for, in establishing a permanent national government, to insure purity and dignity, to secure the confidence of its own people and command the respect of foreign powers, it is not unfit that civil officers, and most especially the highest of all, the head of the people, should be answerable for personal demeanor. The common law punished whatever acts were productive of disturbance to the public peace, or tended to incite to the commission of crime, or to injure the health or morals of the people, — such as profanity, drunkenness, challenging to fight, soliciting to the commission of crime, carrying infection through the streets, — an endless variety of offences.

Amongst these are, subverting the fundamental laws and introducing arbitrary power; for an ambassador to give false information to the king; to make a treaty between two foreign powers without the knowledge of the king; to deliver up towns without consent of his colleagues; to incite the king to act against the advice of Parliament; to give the king evil counsel; for the Speaker of the House of Commons to refuse to proceed; for the Lord Chancellor to threaten the other judges to make them subscribe to his opinions.

These text-writers seem to have been referred to and followed by our later ones. But to the offences enumerated by these authorities we must add others taken from cases in the State Trials. The High Court of Impeachment had included amongst political high crimes and misdemeanors the following, viz.

The nature of the charges may be illustrated by one of the allegations against an evil judge. Such was the nature of political offences, as known to the framers of the Constitution. It answered to the natural sense of the terms of the Constitution, as understood by the people in establishing it. The House can impeach a judge with a simple majority vote.

However, a judge may only be removed from office following a trial and a vote to convict by a two-thirds majority of the Senate. And in others the number of votes required to impeach or convict differs. Impeachment of judges is rare, and removal is rarer still.

With respect to federal judges, since , the House of Representatives has impeached only 15 judges — an average of one every 14 years — and only 8 of those impeachments were followed by convictions in the Senate. Impeachment in the states has been similarly rare. A review of studies by the American Judicature Society and the National Center for State Courts, as well as news articles, reveals just two instances of a state judge being impeached in the last 25 years. In , Pennsylvania impeached and removed the first and only judge in its history, Supreme Court Justice Rolf Larsen, and in New Hampshire impeached, but the state senate declined to remove, Supreme Court Justice David Brock.

There are more instances, however, of legislators unsuccessfully calling for the impeachment of a judge. However, the impeachment power has historically been limited to cases of serious ethical or criminal misconduct. For example, in , the House impeached U.

District Court Judge Samuel B. Kent on charges of sexual assault, obstructing an official proceeding, and making false statements. Kent resigned before the Senate tried the charges. The next year, the House impeached U. District Court Judge G.