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. House charged Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
The first article passed by a vote of and the second On February 5, , the Senate acquitted him of abuse of power by a vote and of obstruction of Congress by a vote. On January 13, , the House voted to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection related to the January 6 Capitol breach during electoral vote counting.
On February 13, —after Trump had left office as a result of the presidential election —the Senate acquitted Trump.
A two-thirds vote was required to convict. Fifty-seven senators voted to convict, and 43 voted to acquit. Secretary of War William Belknap was impeached on March 2, , on charges of "criminally disregarding his duty as Secretary of War and basely prostituting his high office to his lust for private gain.
Grant resignation papers earlier that day, and he stood trial before the Senate as a former government official, as agreed to by the Senate. He was acquitted of all charges on August 1, Following the trial, the Senate agreed not to hold trials for government officials who offered resignation. The table below presents a list of federal judges who have been impeached in the U.
Of the 15 federal judges that have been impeached, eight have been convicted and removed from office by the U. Ballotpedia features , encyclopedic articles written and curated by our professional staff of editors, writers, and researchers. Click here to contact our editorial staff, and click here to report an error. Click here to contact us for media inquiries, and please donate here to support our continued expansion.
Share this page Follow Ballotpedia. What's on your ballot? Jump to: navigation , search. Notes on impeachment Under the Constitution, there is no right to a jury for an impeachment trial in the Senate; instead, the Senate functions as a jury. Similarly, individuals convicted in a criminal or civil trial may have those convictions used against them in impeachment proceedings.
Also, the Constitution prohibits the president of the United States from exercising the presidential power to pardon any person who has been impeached by the U.
House, even if the individual is later acquitted in the Senate. In Nixon v. United States, a case brought by an impeached federal judge, Walter Nixon , the court held that the Constitution granted the Congress exclusive power over impeachments and that these decisions were not subject to judicial review in federal court.
File:Johnson Impeachment Committee. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source. Categories : Pages with broken file links Terms and definitions. Voter information What's on my ballot? Where do I vote? How do I register to vote? Impeachment at the federal level is rare; removal even more so.
Impeachment proceedings have been initiated by the House of Representatives more than 60 times since the adoption of the U. Just 20 of those proceedings have actually ended with impeachment. There have been just eight convictions by the Senate, all of them of federal judges. Only three U. House of Representatives. All three were acquitted by the Senate. The Constitution names the president and vice president as subject to impeachment.
The question of exactly who "all Civil Officers of the United States" are has been the subject of much discussion. The Federalist Papers—85 essays by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison that comprise a foundational document of American history—make clear that impeachment serves as a check on the executive and judicial branches of government. The essays do not, however, specify who within those branches would be considered civil officers.
The term "civil officers" is broad enough to include any officer appointed by the federal government. Based on historic precedent, federal judges including Supreme Court justices are subject to impeachment, as are members of the president's cabinet. Military officers—who face discipline under the military code—are not subject to impeachment, nor are members of Congress, a precedent established in There was considerable debate at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia over the definition of impeachable crimes.
Initially, the founders said the president and others could be removed by impeachment and conviction for "corrupt conduct" or "malpractice or neglect of duty. The debate did not stop there because the phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors" left the matter of impeachable offenses open to interpretation. Since the ratification of the Constitution in , the definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" has plagued members of Congress, lawyers, and legal scholars alike.
The framers borrowed the term "high crimes and misdemeanors" from British law, wherein it referred to crimes by public officials against the government. In practical terms, as Representative Gerald Ford said in , "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.
Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution states that the House of Representatives has the sole power to impeach. The House, however, does not have the power to remove an impeached individual. That duty goes to the Senate, which holds a trial and decides whether to convict and remove or acquit.
Impeachment begins when the House adopts a resolution calling for an investigation by a House committee into charges against the official in question. The committee may recommend impeachment or dismissal. 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.
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