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Peytin Metz – The Impeachment Clause

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The United States Constitution was highly informed by the experiences they had under British rule, both negative and positive. The Framers of the Constitution drew inspiration from the British Impeachment tradition, which was a system put in place in order to hold high-ranking officials accountable for any serious offenses that had been committed. They wanted to ensure that the U.S. President would not be able to abuse their power, as they observed in the British monarchy. To prevent an unbalanced concentration of power in the Executive branch, they created an intricate system of checks and balances, including the impeachment process. Historically, there have been three Presidential impeachments. Andrew Johnson in 1968, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald J. Trump in 2019 and 2021. The process of Impeachment begins with an impeachment inquiry conducted by the House of Representatives. It is then put to trial in the Senate, where a vote is conducted to determine if the individual is to be convicted or acquitted.

The Impeachment Clause is located in Article II of the Constitution, which lists the enumerated powers of the Executive branch. This clause states, that in a trial of impeachment, the President may risk being removed from office if convicted of “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” This clause served as another check against the President, giving Congress and the House of Representatives the power to remove the President and Vice President from office if necessary. The interpretation of the phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors” is widely debated, because it only appears in the context of the Impeachment Clause. It means that the President or Vice President can only be impeached on the basis of violating the rules of public office, and impeachment cannot be inflicted as a punishment for basic incompetency. This makes the distinction between lack of ability and impeachment-worthy actions challenging to find. 

Legal scholars often debate the vagueness of this phrase, wanting it to either be read more narrowly or broadly. Scholars argue that if impeachable offenses were more narrowly read, it would leave the government unprepared for any unanticipated misdemeanors. If the offenses were read too broadly, the clause would risk forming legislative partisanship that would obstruct the independence of other government officials. Many people refer to the words of Chief Justice John Marshall to defend the ambiguity of the Impeachment clause. He stated that the “constitution [is] intended to endure for ages to come and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.” He believed that the Constitution cannot and should not be expected to explicitly list the proper grounds for impeachment. It should be malleable and open to interpretation, to ensure that an unfit member of the Executive Branch can be punished accordingly. Many fear that narrowly defining the grounds of impeachment would allow the person who risks such punishment to avoid it on a specific technicality of the phrase.

Article II, Section 4 (Impeachment Clause)-Mira Gulati

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The impeachment clause in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution is one of the most important powers given to Congress. It embodies the key principles of separation of powers and checks and balances embedded in the document. These principles were created by Baron Montesquieu, an Enlightenment thinker, who said that separating the branches and holding each other accountable was essential to preventing abuse of power that denied people their liberty. 

The objective of the impeachment clause was to provide Congress with another safeguard for this abuse of power, stating that “The President, Vice President and all 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.”  An earlier draft of the impeachment clause held that officials could be impeached for “Treason, Bribery, or maladministration” James Madison and the Philadelphia delegates objected to the wording and said that its obscurity would result in unreasonable impeachments. As a result, the word ‘maladministration’ was removed in favor of ‘other high crimes and Misdemeanors’ With these new revisions, congress instituted a clause that allowed the House of Representatives to bring charges against any official that has committed a crime or worked against the will of the American people. The exclusion of ‘maladministration’ makes it clear that unfitness for the post is not a valid reason for impeachment. However, the full grounds for impeachment are still not clarified with the new phrase and the meaning of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ is still debated today. 

The different interpretations came into play during former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1999. The impeachment arrived after it was revealed that Clinton had lied under oath about his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The Senate, however, did not find him guilty of the counts of perjury and obstruction of justice Many Democrats advocated that while Clinton’s behavior was morally punishable, it did not affect the public so it did not constitute impeachment. That it was not a ‘high crime’ On the other side of the aisle, Republicans argued that his actions betrayed the trust of the nation and were therefore liable for conviction. 

The Clinton case raised a lot of questions surrounding the conduct of government officials. Many people wondered whether he set a precedent that only wrongdoing related to the President’s decisions involving the nation would constitute an impeachment. Whether only crimes prosecutable by court apply to the clause or misconduct and dishonor did too. If the original clause is to be maintained, only time and more impeachments will answer it. 

An alternate solution, however, lies in an amendment that would revise the last phrase of the Constitution so that the ‘high’ in ‘high crimes’ is removed. This would help clarify whether any crime that an official commits is applicable for impeachment. It does not make sense to have a range of crimes that an official is allowed to commit as they need to be held to the same standards as everyone else in America. The system of checks and balances that are meant to retain the citizen’s liberty holds no power if they do not.