High crimes and misdemeanors in presidential impeachment
By: H. Lowell Brown.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 238
ISBN-13: 9780230621350
Subjects: Johnson, Andrew, -- 1808-1875 -- Impeachment; Nixon, Richard M. -- 1913-1994 -- Impeachment; Clinton, Bill, -- 1946- -- Impeachment; Impeachments -- United States -- History
Description: The United States Constitution provides in Article II, Section 4 that the President and other civil officers of the federal government are subject to removal from office upon impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate of treason, bribery and "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." However, no authoritative definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" was provided by the Framers either in the Constitution itself or in the debates at the constitutional convention. As a consequence, the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" has been a subject of controversy beginning with the first impeachment and trial of Judge John Pickering in 1804 and continuing through the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton. The study seeks to discern the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" not only from the record of the constitutional convention and the state ratifying conventions, together with history of British parliamentary impeachments and the experience of the American colonies and states which informed the Framers' adoption of "high crimes and misdemeanors" as grounds for removal of the President, but also from the circumstances that resulted in the impeachments of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Clinton, as Congress labored to give substance to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" standard.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Original meaning; title: The impeachment and trial of Andrew Johnson; title: The proceedings against Richard M. Nixon; title: The impeachment and trial of William Jefferson Clinton.