{"id":353,"date":"2023-06-02T15:48:37","date_gmt":"2023-06-02T15:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/giselle-barker-final-constitution-project-article-2-section-4\/"},"modified":"2023-06-02T21:21:56","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T21:21:56","slug":"giselle-barker-final-constitution-project-article-2-section-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/giselle-barker-final-constitution-project-article-2-section-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Giselle Barker &#8211; Final Constitution Project, Article 2, Section 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Video<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"entry-content-asset\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Giselle Barker - The Final Constitution Project\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tuen1QiYDU0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Written Component<\/h3>\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The second article in the Constitution constrains the elements of the executive branch, which is one of the three established in the Constitution. The fourth section in the article, gives power to the people by allowing impeachment to elected officials, as well as allows the other branches to check the executive system. The section states that reasons for impeachment can be \u201cTreason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors\u201d, the motivation for including this within the Constitution is to prevent any corruption from taking place in office. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This connects back to the fear that many Americans and public leaders had of undergoing the American Revolution again because of the abuse of power from King George. The common understanding of section 4 is that Congress has the power to vote on the removal of the President, Vice President, or other elected officials. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, matters of debate on the clarity of this section of the article have been interpreted differently, the particular line \u201chigh crimes and Misdemeanors\u201d have been regarded as not specific enough to be a claim. Since high crimes and misdemeanors could include misdemeanors as small as littering to a first-degree misdemeanor charge, many scholars debate that this statement is too vague and could mean that littering could qualify as an impeachable offense. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As an example, scholars use the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton in 1998 when Bill Clinton was being tried under the statement of \u201chigh crimes and misdemeanors\u201d after lying under oath about an affair. The question arose of whether or not certain crimes could be an impeachable offense, especially since the misdemeanor occurred under unofficial matters and was heavily based on how protected his private life by lying. This example shows how the statement \u201cmisdemeanors\u201d could be confusing and not allow for a filter of what is considered impeachable or not.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Based on both the common and divergent interpretation, I understand how the language used in the 4th section can come off as confusing and is too vague to be able to cause the impeachment of an office official. An adaptation that I believe would be beneficial would be to add the word first degree misdemeanors instead of just the word misdemeanors. This allows for confusion around the term misdemeanors to be eliminated and stops the idea that the section&#8217;s vagueness makes impeachment hard to apply. As well, this adaptation could be very helpful for possible upcoming impeachment trials and save the debate of whether the offense is considered impeachable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The second article in the Constitution constrains the elements of the executive branch, which is one of the three established in the Constitution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4549,"featured_media":352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,222,39,357,360,26,362,361,359,356,223,227,270,200,358],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-15","tag-222","tag-article","tag-article-2","tag-barker","tag-constitution","tag-executive","tag-final","tag-giselle","tag-giselle-barker-final-constitution-project","tag-impeachment","tag-impeachment-clause","tag-project","tag-section","tag-section-4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4549"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/theconstitution\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}