[J-65A-2023, J-65B-2023 and J-65C-2023] [MO: Todd, C.J.]

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF PENNSYLVANIA

EASTERN DISTRICT

LARRY KRASNER, IN HIS OFFICIAL 

CAPACITY AS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY 

OF PHILADELPHIA

v.

SENATOR KIM WARD, IN HER OFFICIAL 

CAPACITY AS PRESIDENT PRO 

TEMPORE OF THE SENATE; 

REPRESENTATIVE TIMOTHY R. 

BONNER, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS 

AN IMPEACHMENT MANAGER; 

REPRESENTATIVE CRAIG WILLIAMS, IN 

HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN 

IMPEACHMENT MANAGER; 

REPRESENTATIVE JARED SOLOMON, IN 

HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN 

IMPEACHMENT MANAGER; AND JOHN 

DOES, IN THEIR OFFICIAL CAPACITIES 

AS MEMBERS OF THE SENATE 

IMPEACHMENT COMMITTEE

APPEAL OF: REPRESENTATIVE 

TIMOTHY R. BONNER AND 

REPRESENTATIVE CRAIG WILLIAMS

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No. 2 EAP 2023

Appeal from the Order of 

Commonwealth Court entered on 

December 30, 2022, at No. 563 MD 

2022.

ARGUED: November 28, 2023

LARRY KRASNER, IN HIS OFFICIAL 

CAPACITY AS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY 

OF PHILADELPHIA,

Appellant

v.

SENATOR KIM WARD, IN HER OFFICIAL 

CAPACITY AS PRESIDENT PRO 

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No. 3 EAP 2023

Appeal from the Order of 

Commonwealth Court entered on 

December 30, 2022, at No. 563 MD 

2022.

ARGUED: November 28, 2023
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TEMPORE OF THE SENATE; 

REPRESENTATIVE TIMOTHY R. 

BONNER, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS 

AN IMPEACHMENT MANAGER; 

REPRESENTATIVE CRAIG WILLIAMS, IN 

HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN 

IMPEACHMENT MANAGER; 

REPRESENTATIVE JARED SOLOMON, IN 

HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN 

IMPEACHMENT MANAGER; AND JOHN 

DOES, IN THEIR OFFICIAL CAPACITIES 

AS MEMBERS OF THE SENATE 

IMPEACHMENT COMMITTEE,

Appellees

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LARRY KRASNER, IN HIS OFFICIAL 

CAPACITY AS THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY 

OF PHILADELPHIA

v.

SENATOR KIM WARD, IN HER OFFICIAL 

CAPACITY AS PRESIDENT PRO 

TEMPORE OF THE SENATE; 

REPRESENTATIVE TIMOTHY R. 

BONNER, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS 

AN IMPEACHMENT MANAGER; 

REPRESENTATIVE CRAIG WILLIAMS, IN 

HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN 

IMPEACHMENT MANAGER; 

REPRESENTATIVE JARED SOLOMON, IN 

HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS AN 

IMPEACHMENT MANAGER; AND JOHN 

DOES, IN THEIR OFFICIAL CAPACITIES 

AS MEMBERS OF THE SENATE 

IMPEACHMENT COMMITTEE

APPEAL OF: SENATOR KIM WARD

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No. 4 EAP 2023

Appeal from the Order of the 

Commonwealth Court entered on 

December 30, 2022, at No. 563 MD 

2022.

ARGUED: November 28, 2023

CONCURRING AND DISSENTING OPINION
[J-65A-2023, J-65B-2023 and J-65C-2023] [MO: Todd, C.J.] - 3

JUSTICE MUNDY DECIDED: September 26, 2024

I agree with the Majority’s conclusion that the question of the effect of sine die 

adjournment is justiciable. However, because Article VI, Section 5 of our Constitution 

does not contain a temporal limitation on the mandate that the Senate hold a trial on “all 

impeachments,” and Article II, Section 4 similarly does not impose such a limitation on 

the Senate’s role in conducting an impeachment trial, I respectfully dissent. 

Article VI of the Pennsylvania Constitution is titled “Public Officials.” Article VI, 

Sections 4 and 5 specify the powers and roles of the House of Representatives and the 

Senate in impeachment proceedings as follows:

§ 4. Power of impeachment

The House of Representatives shall have the sole power of 

impeachment.

PA. CONST. art. VI, § 4.

§ 5. Trial of impeachments

All impeachments shall be tried by the Senate. When sitting 

for that purpose the Senators shall be upon oath or 

affirmation. No person shall be convicted without the 

concurrence of two-thirds of the members present.

PA. CONST. art. VI, § 5.

In Article VI, Sections 4 and 5, the text of our Constitution plainly and 

unambiguously delineates the separate, distinct, and independent roles of the House of 

Representatives and the Senate in the impeachment of a public officer. The House of 

Representatives has “the sole power of impeachment.” PA. CONST. art. VI, § 4; accord In 

re Investigation by Dauphin County Grand Jury, Sept. 1938, 2 A.2d 802, 803 (Pa. 1938) 

(finding the constitution’s plain language provides the House’s impeachment power is 

plenary). Once the House exercises this power that it alone possesses, the Constitution 

then obligates the Senate to hold a trial on the impeachment. PA. CONST. art. VI, § 5. 
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This division of powers plainly means that the roles of the House and the Senate 

regarding impeachment and trial are distinct and occur independently of each other

without requiring concurrence from one another.

Further, the Constitution obligates the Senate to try “all impeachments.” PA.

CONST. art. VI, § 5. This directive is not limited by or contingent upon which session of 

the House of Representatives exercises its power of impeachment. The Constitution 

simply does not specify that the Senate must hold a trial in the same legislative session 

as the one in which the House has issued articles of impeachment. To the contrary, the 

Senate in its constitutional role as the trier of an impeachment is not exercising a 

legislative function. The Constitution’s structure places the impeachment procedure in 

Article VI, separate from the House of Representatives’ and the Senate’s other powers 

and roles, making clear that this is a distinct procedure. Further, the language of Article 

VI, Section 5 provides that Senators “sitting for that purpose,” i.e., to adjudicate an 

impeachment, must follow different procedures, namely taking an oath or affirmation1 and 

obtaining a two-thirds vote to convict, which plainly prescribes a separate “purpose” to 

the Senate when it is sitting as the trier of an impeachment. Id. When conducting an 

impeachment trial, the Senate has a specific role, separate and distinct from its legislative 

functions.

Accordingly, pursuant the plain text of the Constitution, the House of 

Representatives completed the exercise of its impeachment power on November 16, 

1 The Senate’s resolution “[p]roposing special rules of practice and procedure in the 

Senate when sitting on impeachment trials” reflects senators sitting for the impeachment 

trial would take an oath affirming they would “do impartial justice according to the 

Constitution and laws[.]” 2022 S.R. 386 (R.R. at 131a, 143a). This oath to do impartial 

justice is distinct from the oath of office contained in Article VI, Section 3. See Pa. Const. 

art. VI, § 3 (providing an oath to “support, obey and defend the Constitution of the United 

States and the Constitution of this Commonwealth and [to] discharge the duties of [] office 

with fidelity.”).
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2022, when it passed House Resolution 240 containing amended articles of impeachment 

against Larry Krasner. The Senate’s independent constitutional obligation to hold a trial 

on Krasner’s articles of impeachment then arose, and that obligation was not terminated 

when the 206th legislative session ended. Instead, the Constitution obligated the senate 

of the 207th Session to try the impeachment. Nothing in the Constitution provides 

otherwise.

In concluding the opposite, the Majority reads Article II, “The Legislature,” in 

combination with Article VI, “Public Officers,” to impose a temporal restriction on the 

Senate’s duty to try all impeachments such that the House’s impeachment power and the 

Senate’s trial must be completed in the same legislative session. The text of the relevant 

provisions of Article II clearly outlines the legislative powers of the General Assembly as 

follows:

§ 1. Legislative power

The legislative power of this Commonwealth shall be vested 

in a General Assembly, which shall consist of a Senate and a 

House of Representatives.

PA. CONST. art. II, § 1 (emphasis added).

§ 4. Sessions

The General Assembly shall be a continuing body during the 

term for which its Representatives are elected. It shall meet 

at twelve o’clock noon on the first Tuesday of January each 

year. Special sessions shall be called by the Governor on 

petition of a majority of the members elected to each House 

or may be called by the Governor whenever in his opinion the 

public interest requires.

PA. CONST. art. II, § 4 (emphasis added).

The Majority’s purported textual analysis of Article II is not textual at all, it is highly 

attenuated. Initially, Article II—titled “The Legislature”—plainly defines the legislative 
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powers of the General Assembly. As seen above, Article II, Section 1 provides “the 

legislative power of this Commonwealth shall be vested in a General Assembly, which 

shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” PA. CONST. art. II, § 1. 

Notably, this “legislative power” is textually distinct from the “sole power of impeachment” 

bestowed by Article VI, Section 4 on the House of Representatives and from the duty to 

conduct a trial of “all impeachments” conferred on the Senate by Article VI, Section 5. 

See Commonwealth ex rel. Attorney General v. Griest, 46 A. 505, 505-06 (Pa. 1900) 

(recognizing that an Article of the Constitution may be construed as “a system entirely 

complete in itself”).2 The Commonwealth’s legislative power is exercised by the collective 

General Assembly, whereas each House has a distinct and independent power regarding 

impeachment. Thus, when Article II, Section 4 states that the “General Assembly shall 

be a continuing body during the term for which its Representatives are elected[,]” it plainly 

means the General Assembly as the body exercising the Commonwealth’s legislative 

power given its placement in Article II. This makes sense because only the General 

Assembly acting as an integrated unit can pass legislation. The same is not true of the 

2 The Majority is correct that Griest did not address impeachment proceedings. See Maj. 

Op. at 49, fn 30. However, Griest stands for the principle that the Constitution provides 

certain processes that are separate from and unconnected to other Articles of the 

Constitution. See Griest, 46 A. at 506 (declaring the article providing for Constitutional 

Amendments is “a separate and independent article, standing alone and entirely 

unconnected with any other subject.”). Article VI’s impeachment power is, like the 

amendment process, “a system entirely complete in itself; requiring no extraneous aid, 

either in matters of detail or of general scope, to its effectual execution.” Id. The 

impeachment power is not a legislative power, so the Majority’s rejoinder to Griest—that 

“[t]here was no issue in that case as to whether the General Assembly which passed the 

proposed amendment was constitutionally empowered by Article II, Section 4 to do so”—

is misplaced. See Maj. Op. at 49, fn. 30. Article II, Section 4, which addresses the 

duration of a legislative session, does not address the question of the duration of the 

Senate’s duty to try all impeachments. Instead, Article VI, Section 5 addresses the 

Senate’s role in the impeachment process, and it clearly does not contain a temporal 

restriction. 
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distinct roles of impeachment (House) and trial (Senate). Each of those roles is fulfilled 

by a single House acting without the other.

Despite the Majority’s efforts to read Article II as a limitation on the Senate’s 

constitutional duty to try all impeachments, such a temporal limitation does not exist in 

the text of the Constitution. The Majority begins its reasoning with foundational 

constitutional principles that are not in dispute. The Majority states that the Constitution’s 

use of “House of Representatives” and “Senate” “must be understood to have the same 

meanings ascribed to them by Article II, and, consequently, as a necessary condition 

precedent to the House of Representatives and Senate executing powers afforded by 

such provisions, each body must be duly constituted and authorized to act under Article 

II.” Maj. Op. at 47. But this does not answer the question of whether the Senate’s duty 

to conduct a trial on all impeachments is temporally restricted. It simply means that when 

the Senate sits to try an impeachment, it must be duly constituted and authorized to act.

Next, the Majority states that when the House of Representatives has exercised 

its impeachment power, it “immediately triggers the requirement of Article VI, Section 5 

that ‘the Senate,’ again acting collectively as a body, hold a trial on the articles of 

impeachment passed by the House.” Id. Nonetheless, Article VI, Section 5 does not 

specify a timeframe within which the Senate’s trial must be commenced or completed, 

nor does it state or imply that it must be the Senate of the same session in which the 

impeachment took place. Similarly, the Majority explains that “under Article II, Section 4, 

the General Assembly is a continuing body only for this two year session, and upon the 

expiration of that session, it ceases to exist.” Id. at 47. As explained above, Article II, 
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Section 4 refers to specifically legislative powers of the General Assembly, which are 

distinct from the individual Houses’ impeachment powers.3 

From these foundational constitutional principles, the Majority then extrapolates a 

temporal limitation on the Senate’s impeachment role that is not contained in the 

Constitution. Referring to the definition of a legislative session in Article II, the Majority 

opines:

all powers granted by the Constitution to the House of 

Representatives and the Senate last only for the duration of 

the session of the General Assembly in which those bodies 

came into being under Article II, and those powers expire 

when that session expires. The Constitution simply does not 

textually permit the House and the Senate of a subsequent 

session of the General Assembly to take any further action on 

matters which the House or Senate of a prior session of the 

General Assembly may have begun, but not finished during 

that session, given that they are constitutionally distinct 

entities under Article II.

Id. at 48. The Majority continues, “under Article II, a House impeachment resolution 

authorizing impeachment and the transmission of articles of impeachment to the Senate 

3 Contrary to Justice Wecht’s legislative/judicial characterization, my position is based 

solely on the text of the Constitution which plainly distinguishes between the “legislative 

power” and the “power of impeachment.” See Concurring Op. at 4 (Wecht, J.). Justice 

Wecht’s concurring opinion dismisses the Constitution’s textual distinction of the General 

Assembly’s “legislative power” from the House’s “power of impeachment” and the 

Senate’s role as trier of impeachments because Article II specifies the composition of the 

legislature itself. See id. at 5. Again, Article II, Section 4 defines the session of the 

General Assembly as a collective body exercising its Article II, Section 1 legislative power. 

This is different from the other Article II provisions that Justice Wecht invokes. See id. at 

5-6. Those other Article II provisions apply to individual senators and representatives 

(term length and eligibility) and to each House individually (quorum and open sessions). 

See Pa. Const. art. II, §§ 3, 5, 6, 7, 10, 13. Thus, those requirements are distinct from 

Article II, Section 4 because Section 4 applies to the General Assembly as a collective 

body exercising its legislative power. To illustrate, the Senate could not conduct an 

impeachment trial with ineligible members because Article II, Sections 5-7 applies to 

individual members any time they sit in their official capacity. Similarly, the Senate could 

not try an official without a quorum because Article II, Section 10 applies any time the 

Senate sits as a body. In contrast, the Section 4 “continuing body” language applies only 

to the collective General Assembly in the exercise of its legislative power.
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for trial, and a Senate resolution which accepts those articles for trial, expire with that 

Session of the General Assembly, such resolutions can have no legal force and effect in 

a new session of the General Assembly whose membership has been altered by an 

intervening election and is now composed of both reelected and newly elected members.” 

Id. at 50. Even conceding that each House’s powers expire when a legislative session 

expires, the Constitution nonetheless vests every session of the Senate with the 

obligation to try “all impeachments,” independent of the whether the same or a prior 

session of the House of Representatives issued the articles of impeachment. In terms of 

this case, the House of Representatives of the 206th Session of the General Assembly 

completed the exercise of its constitutional power of impeachment when it issued the 

resolution containing the articles of impeachment, which triggered the requirement that 

the Senate hold a trial. Although the Senate of the 206th Session of the General 

Assembly’s obligation to conduct a trial expired at the end of its session, Article VI, Section 

5 of the Constitution imposes that same obligation on the Senate of the 207th Session of 

the General Assembly.

Next, the Majority states that articles of impeachment “must also be considered an 

expression of the will of the then-sitting House of Representatives that the then-sitting 

Senate conduct a trial on the allegations contained in the articles.” Id. at 49. But there is 

no textual support for such a concept. Given that the Constitution requires the Senate to 

try “all impeachments” it is more accurate to say that the articles of impeachment express 

the House’s intent that the Senate conduct a trial regardless of the time in the future or 

the specific legislative session in which that occurs. Here, the House of Representatives 

exercised its power of impeachment under Article VI, Section 4, giving rise to the Senate’s

constitutional duty to conduct a trial of that impeachment. The Constitution simply does 

not specify that the Senate sitting when the House of Representatives passed its articles 
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of impeachment must conduct the impeachment trial. Instead, the Constitution directs 

the Senate to try all impeachments. The majority converts this to some impeachments.

Notably, the text of Article VI does, in at least one instance, require action by the 

General Assembly as a whole. See PA. CONST. art. VI, § 2 (“The General Assembly may 

by law declare what offices are incompatible.”). By referring to the legislative body as a 

unit in the exercise of its lawmaking function, Section 2 incorporates from Article II, 

Section 4 the requirement, attendant to that specific function, that the Houses and the 

Senate pass the bill in the same legislative session. However, Sections 4 and 5 of Article 

VI are distinctly different from Section 2 in that they only refer to the two Houses 

individually in their separate functions. This implicates the principle of construction that, 

where language appears in one section of a statute but is omitted from a related provision, 

a different meaning is presumed. See In re Vencil, 152 A.3d 235, 244 (Pa. 2017). To the 

extent this leaves any uncertainty concerning whether the framers intended that the 

House of one session could impeach and the Senate of a subsequent session could hold 

a trial, such uncertainty is resolved by the command, expressed in unambiguous terms 

and without exception, that “all impeachments” must be tried by the Senate. The word 

“all” being universal necessarily incorporates impeachments by the House during a prior 

session.

Lastly, the Majority concludes “that the Articles of Impeachment passed by the 

House of Representatives of the 206th Session of the General Assembly, and transmitted 

to the Senate of the 206th Session of the General Assembly, became null and void upon 

the expiration of the 206th Session of the General Assembly on November 30, 2022.” Id.

at 51. As explained above, this holding is not supported by the Constitutional text or 

history. Instead, and consistent with the above explanation, the House of 

Representatives’ transmission of the articles of impeachment to the Senate represents 
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the completion of the House’s exercise of its power of impeachment, which then 

constitutionally obligates the Senate to try that impeachment. There is no constitutional 

expiration date for such obligation. Because the Constitution’s plain text does not 

temporally restrict the Senate’s duty to try all impeachments, the Senate of the 207th 

Session of the General Assembly was not constitutionally prohibited from conducting a 

trial on the articles of impeachment. 

This interpretation of the nature of impeachment proceedings as surviving a sine 

die adjournment of the General Assembly has been consistent throughout our 

Commonwealth’s history. As Designated Appellee Senator Kim Ward chronicles, five 

impeachments in our history have continued from one legislative session of the General 

Assembly to a subsequent session.4 While the General Assembly’s understanding of the 

Constitution and its practice are not binding on the judiciary, it is persuasive as “strong 

evidence of the true interpretation of the constitutional power of the legislature[.]” Olive 

Cemetery Co. v. Phila., 93 Pa. 129, 132 (1880) (internal quotation marks and citation 

omitted); see also Commonwealth ex rel. Greene v. Gregg, 29 A. 297, 298 (Pa. 1894). 

Additionally, the Attorney General of Pennsylvania issued an opinion in 1913 concluding 

that a special committee empaneled by the House of Representatives to conduct an 

impeachment investigation had the authority to continue its work after the adjournment of 

the General Assembly. See Umbel’s Case, 41 Pa.C.C. 414, 417 (1913). The Attorney 

General reasoned that impeachment is not a legislative function and that each house of 

the legislature “has a separate and distinct function to perform in such proceedings.” Id. 

This evidence of the historical practices and interpretation regarding impeachment is 

4 Specifically, the five impeachment trials were of: Comptroller General Nicholson (1793-

94); Judge Addison (1802-03); Justices Shippen, Yeates, and Smith (1804-05); Judge 

Porter (1825); and Judge Chapman (1825-26). Ward’s Br. at 12-17. In each case, the 

Senate conducted its impeachment trial on articles of impeachment issued by the House 

of Representatives of the prior legislative session. Id.
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persuasive given that the Constitution’s impeachment powers, currently found in Article 

VI, Sections 4 and 5, have not been substantively altered since the Constitution of 1790.5 

Ultimately, the touchstone in interpreting the Constitution “is the actual language of the 

Constitution itself,” which we must interpret “in its popular sense, as understood by the 

people when they voted on its adoption.” Robinson Twp., Wash. Cty. v. Commonwealth, 

83 A.3d 901, 943 (Pa. 2013). As the impeachment and adjudication powers currently 

found in Article VI, Sections 4 and 5 have remained substantively identical since 1790, 

despite renumbering and minor grammatical alterations, I interpret those provisions to 

embody the popular understanding as reflected in our Commonwealth’s history that an 

adjournment of the General Assembly does not terminate an impeachment proceeding. 

See id. 

The Majority identifies policy concerns to support its addition of a temporal 

limitation to the Senate’s Article VI, Section 5 duty to try all impeachments. Maj. Op. at 

50. Specifically, the Majority claims that all future sessions of the Senate would be 

obligated to try impeachments regardless of how long ago the House passed the articles 

of impeachment, and that the former House of Representatives’ impeachment managers 

would be permitted to serve indefinitely in that capacity. Id. However, there are 

countervailing concerns with confining an impeachment proceeding to a two-year 

legislative session. One significant problem is that it invites an impeached official who 

does not want to stand trial in the Senate to “run out the clock” on the impeachment 

process by resorting to delay tactics, such as filing motions in the Senate or initiating legal 

actions in the judicial system, to stave off a trial until the General Assembly’s sine die

adjournment for that session. Conversely, an official impeached late in the House’s two5 Compare PA. CONST. art. IV, §§ I-II (1790), PA. CONST. art. IV, §§ I-II (1838), and PA.

CONST. art. VI, §§ 1-2 (1874), with PA. CONST. art. VI, §§ 4-5 (1968).
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year session who wanted to rehabilitate his or her reputation by an acquittal in the Senate 

would be denied due process by virtue of the clock running out.6 However, because the 

constitutional language is clear and controlling, these policy concerns ultimately should 

not factor into this Court’s analysis. See League of Women Voters v. Commonwealth, 

178 A.3d 737, 801 (Pa. 2018).

For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.7

6 Justice Wecht’s suggested remedy that “the new House could always pass the articles 

of impeachment again” does little to address either of these concerns. See Concurring 

Op. at 8 (Wecht, J.). An official who wants to avoid a Senate trial still has every incentive 

to engage in delay tactics to run out the now-definite, two-year clock, even if the new 

House somehow initiates an impeachment on the first day of a new legislative session. 

Conversely, if the new House has no political will to impeach the official again, the public 

is denied the ability to have the impeached official tried by the Senate.

7 As the Majority resolves this case based solely on the principle of sine die adjournment, 

I reserve my opinion regarding the remaining issues we accepted for appeal.