The respondent may also choose to answer the articles brought against him or her. Upon the conclusion of the plea, the Senate will set a trial date. House managers or their counsel then provide the Senate with information regarding witnesses who are to be subpoenaed and may apply to the trial's presiding officer should additional witnesses need to be subpoenaed. Under Article I, Section 3, clause 6 of the Constitution, the chief justice of the United States only presides over the Senate impeachment trial if the president is being tried.
During impeachment trials, the full Senate may receive evidence and take testimony or the Senate may order the presiding officer to appoint a committee of Senators to serve this purpose.
If a committee is appointed, the committee will present a certified transcript of the proceedings to the full Senate. The Senate can also take additional testimony in an open Senate. The Senate may also order that the entire trial be before the full Senate. At the beginning of the trial, House managers and respondent's counsel present opening arguments regarding the impeachment charges.
The House managers, as the prosecution in the trial, present the first argument. During the course of the trial, evidence is presented and witnesses may be put to both direct examination and cross-examination. The presiding officer may rule on any question of evidence presented but the officer can also refer that question to a vote of the Senate and any senator can request a vote on a particular question. Closing arguments will be presented by each side, with House managers opening and closing.
When the trial is concluded, the Senate meets in closed session to deliberate. Voting to convict on the articles of impeachment must be done in open session, and votes are tallied separately on each article. To convict on an article of impeachment, a two-thirds vote of senators present to vote is required. If the respondent is convicted on one or more of the articles, the presiding officer will pronounce the judgment of conviction and removal.
The Senate may subsequently vote on whether the impeached official shall be disqualified from holding an office of public trust under the United States in the future. If the Senate considers such a motion, only a simple majority vote is required. Article II, Section 4 of the United States Constitution stipulates that the president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States can be impeached and removed from office on three charges:.
The document reads, "treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. The phrase high crimes and misdemeanors is also not defined in the Constitution. During the Constitutional Convention, Virginia delegate George Mason suggested adding maladministration to the charges of bribery and treason as impeachable offenses.
When concerns were raised as to the vagueness of the term, Mason substituted high crimes and misdemeanors instead. As the Constitutional Rights Foundation notes, [2]. Most of the framers knew the phrase well. Since , the English parliament had used 'high crimes and misdemeanors' as one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown.
Officials accused of 'high crimes and misdemeanors' were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, not spending money allocated by Parliament, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, losing a ship by neglecting to moor it, helping 'suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament,' granting warrants without cause, and bribery.
Some of these charges were crimes. Others were not. The one common denominator in all these accusations was that the official had somehow abused the power of his office and was unfit to serve. In Federalist 65, Alexander Hamilton defined impeachable offenses as "those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words from the abuse or violation of some public trust.
They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. Douglas of the U. Supreme Court. In a speech on the floor of the House, Congressman Ford defined an impeachable offense as "whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history; Cole and Todd Garvey noted that, [1].
The Constitution expressly provides that the president and vice president of the United States may be impeached. The Constitution further provides that all civil officers of the United States may be impeached. Joseph Story , in his Commentaries on the Constitution , wrote that "all officers of the United States, therefore, who hold their appointments under the national government, whether their duties are executive or judicial, in the highest or in the lowest departments of the government, with the exception of officers in the army and navy, are properly civil officers within the meaning of the constitution, and liable to impeachment.
The Constitution, in the Appointments Clause , provides the president with the power to appoint officers of the United States which are subject to Senate confirmation and distinguishes these officials from those inferior officers that the Congress may, by law, grant the president the sole power to appoint i. The U. Supreme Court further recognized the distinction in the two categories under the appointments clause, categorizing these as principal officers and inferior officers respectively, in Edmond v.
United States. In Buckley v. Valeo , the court defined an officer as "any appointee exercising significant authority pursuant to the laws of the United States. Therefore, as Cole and Garvey note, [1]. Any official exercising 'significant authority' including both principal and inferior officers, would therefore qualify as a 'civil Officer' subject to impeachment. This view would permit Congress to impeach and remove any executive branch 'officer,' including many deputy political appointees and certain administrative judges.
William Blount of Tennessee was the first individual ever impeached by the United States House of Representatives and, to this day, is the only member of Congress ever to have been impeached. The House impeached Blount on July 7, , for allegedly conspiring to incite Native Americans and frontiersmen to attack the Spanish lands of Florida and Louisiana in order to give them to England. After the impeachment vote in the House, but before Blount's impeachment trial in the Senate, the Senate voted to expel Blount under provisions of Article I, Section 5 of the United States Constitution.
Due to a lack of jurisdiction in Tennessee , where Blount fled after his conviction, the Senate could not extradite Blount for his impeachment trial. Two years later, in , the Senate determined that Blount was not a civil officer under the definition of the Constitution and, therefore, could not be impeached. The Senate dismissed the charges against Blount for lack of jurisdiction.
Since , the House has not impeached another member of Congress. On February 24, , President Andrew Johnson became the first sitting president to be impeached. Following Congress' passage of the Tenure of Office Act, forbidding the president from removing federal officials without the approval of Congress, Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and replaced him with Ulysses S.
Johnson hoped to challenge the constitutionality of the Act. The House charged him with violating the Act and passed an impeachment resolution Johnson was acquitted by the Senate on May 16, , by a vote of , one vote short of two-thirds. Seven Republican senators broke ranks with the party to prevent Johnson's conviction.
President William Jefferson Clinton , the second president to be impeached, was charged by the U. House on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice on December 19, The first article of impeachment for perjury passed the House by a vote of , while the second vote on obstruction of justice passed by House Republicans accused Clinton of lying and having others lie, hiding the affair.
Two other charges, perjury in regards to an affair with Paula Jones and abuse of power, were rejected by the House. The perjury charge failed by a vote of while the obstruction of justice charge failed on a tied vote of Donald Trump was the third president to be impeached.
He was impeached first in and a second time in On December 18, , the U. The House then votes, by simple majority, to approve or dismiss articles of impeachment. Following approval, the House appoints managers to conduct the impeachment trial in the Senate. The House then passes a resolution informing the Senate about the articles of impeachment and the names of the House managers who will bring the case before the Senate. When the Senate receives the resolution, that body advises the House when it will receive the managers and begin the impeachment trial.
The Senate becomes the court with the president of the Senate presiding, except when the person impeached is the president, in which case, the presiding officer is the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
To convict and remove an impeached individual from office requires a two-thirds majority in the Senate. The penalty for impeachment is a trial in the Senate. Because impeachment is the same as an indictment, there is no other penalty, except perhaps to one's reputation. Impeachment, as discussed above, only requires a simple affirmative majority in the House of Representatives. The Constitution requires a two-thirds affirmative vote in the Senate to convict an impeached person.
The penalty for conviction is removal from office. The Senate also has the option, by simple majority vote, to disqualify the official from holding public office in the future. There is no appeal to impeachment or conviction because it involves a political rather than criminal question.
Of the 20 federal impeachment proceedings since , 10 have occurred in the past years. Impeached officials included 15 federal judges, three presidents, one senator, and a cabinet secretary the secretary of war. These impeachments resulted in seven acquittals, eight convictions all judges and they were removed from office , three dismissals, and one resignation with no further action.
As discussed earlier, only three U. President Richard Nixon was never impeached, although he was threatened with impeachment over the Watergate scandal of Nixon stepped down before Congress could vote on whether to proceed with impeachment, becoming the only U.
President to have resigned from office. A recent impeachment and Senate trial occurred when former President Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on Dec. The resolution contained two impeachment articles:. The article passed with Republican members of the House united in their opposition and two Democrats also voting against the article.
This article passed with one additional Democrat joining Republicans in opposition to the charge. The articles of impeachment were submitted to the Senate on Jan.
Due to objections by Republican senators, no witnesses or documents were subpoenaed. On Feb. The vote on Article I, abuse of power, was 48 for conviction, 52 for acquittal. On Article II, obstruction of Congress, the vote was 47 for conviction, 53 for acquittal. From start to finish, not counting the accumulation of evidence, these impeachment proceedings took a little less than two months.
That said, there is no set amount of time for impeachments and very few specifics about it in the Constitution. For that reason, every impeachment is unique. Constitution Annotated. Constitution - Article II Section 4. Library of Congress. United States Senate.
The White House. Real Estate Investing. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content.
Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. Apply market research to generate audience insights. Measure content performance. Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Your Money. Personal Finance.
Your Practice. Popular Courses. What Is Impeachment? Constitution, is the formal process by which Congress brings charges against high-ranking civil officers, such as the president, in a bid to remove them from office.
Only the U.
0コメント