Committee has prepared reports addressing relevant principles of constitutional law.[1] Consistent with that practice, and to assist the Committee and the House in working toward a resolution of the questions before them, the majority staff prepared the following report to explore the meaning of the words in the Constitution's Impeachment Clause: "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." The report also describes the impeachment process and addresses several mistaken claims about impeachment that have recently drawn public notice.
II.Summary of Principal Conclusions
Our principal conclusions are as follows.
The purpose of impeachment. As the Framers deliberated in Philadelphia, Mason posed a profound question: "Shall any man be above justice?"[2] By authorizing Congress to remove Presidents for egregious misconduct, the Framers offered a resounding answer. As Mason elaborated, "some mode of displacing an unfit magistrate is rendered indispensable by the fallibility of those who choose, as well as by the corruptibility of the man chosen."[3] Unlike Britain's monarch, the President would answer personally—to Congress and thus to the Nation—if he engaged in serious wrongdoing. Alexander Hamilton explained that the President would have no more resemblance to the British king than to "the Grand Seignior, to the khan of Tartary, [or] to the Man of the Seven Mountains."[4]Whereas "the person of the king of Great Britain is sacred and inviolable," the President of the United States could be "impeached, tried, and upon conviction . . . removed from office."[5] Critically, though, impeachment goes no further. It results only in loss of political power. This speaks to the nature of impeachment: it exists not to inflict punishment for past wrongdoing, but rather to save the Nation from misconduct that endangers democracy and the rule of law. Thus, the ultimate question in an impeachment is whether leaving the President in our highest office imperils the Constitution.[6]
Impeachable offenses. The Framers were careful students of history and knew that threats to democracy can take many forms. They feared would-be monarchs, but also warned against fake populists, charismatic demagogues, and corrupt kleptocrats. The Framers thus intended impeachment to reach the full spectrum of Presidential misconduct that menaced the Constitution. Because they could not anticipate and prohibit every threat a President might someday pose, the Framers adopted a standard sufficiently general and flexible to meet unknown future circumstances: "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." This standard was proposed by Mason and was meant, in his words,
- ↑ Staff of H. Comm. on the Judiciary, Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment 93d Cong., 4 (Comm. Print 1974) (hereinafter "Staff Report on Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment (1974)"); Staff of H. Comm. on the Judiciary, Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment: Modern Precedents, 105th Cong. (Comm. Print 1998) (hereinafter "Staff Report on Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment: Modern Precedents (1998)").
- ↑ 2 Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention at 65.
- ↑ 1 Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention at 86.
- ↑ Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 69, 444 (Benjamin Fletcher Wright ed., 2004).
- ↑ Id.
- ↑ See Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law 155 (3d ed. 2000).
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