As investigations and indictments have filled the headlines in 2018, pundits have pondered the mechanism of “impeachment.” My essay back in 2012 discussed the Constitutional basis and historical (and hypothetical) instances of presidential impeachment.
I expressed caution as a historian: “What troubles me ... is the linkage of the drastic measure of presidential impeachment to political hatreds. Whatever the merits of the legal case for a president’s “high crimes and misdemeanors,” visceral hostility seems to shape the environment when some seek to remove the chief executive of our nation.”
Might the topic need to be re-visited? Our “Living Constitution” always invites new chapters to be written.
Stay tuned.
Return to Constitution Day 2018’s Progressives and Prohibition: A Progressive Constitution? (Part 2)