Impeachment Grounds: A Collection of Selected Materials (CRS Report for Congress)
Premium Purchase PDF for $24.95 (36 pages)
add to cart or
subscribe for unlimited access
Pro Premium subscribers have free access to our full library of CRS reports.
Subscribe today, or
request a demo to learn more.
| Release Date |
Oct. 29, 1998 |
| Report Number |
98-882 |
| Report Type |
Report |
| Authors |
Charles Doyle, American Law Division |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
Summary:
This is a sampling of the material available on the question of what constitutes impeachable
conduct
for purposes of Article II, section 4 of the United States Constitution. It is arranged in chronological
segments. The first covers those materials available on impeachment at the time the Constitution
was drafted, Blackstone's Commentaries, Wooddeson's Lectures, and the impeachment clauses of
the state constitutions. The second consists of the debates at the Constitutional Convention and the
state ratifying conventions.
The third includes explanations from those who participated in the Convention and their
contemporaries, Alexander Hamilton, and Supreme Court Justices James Wilson and Joseph Story.
The fourth is a summary of major American impeachment cases under the Constitution:
Presidents Andrew Johnson and Richard Nixon, Senator William Blount, Secretary of War William
Belknap, District Court Judges John Pickering, West Humphreys, Halsted Ritter, Harry Claiborne,
Alcee Hastings, Walter Nixon, James Peck, Charles Swayne, George English, and Harold
Louderback, Appellate Court Judge Robert Archbald, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase.
The fifth is made up of material prepared at the time of the Douglas and Nixon impeachment
inquiries including then-Congressman Gerald Ford's remarks. The collection ends with a very
limited assembly of scholarly views from treatises and law reviews among them those of Charles
Black, Congressman Bob Barr, John Labovitz, Paul Fenton, Laurence Tribe, Theordore Dwight,
Alexander Simpson, Michael Gerhardt, and Ronald Rotunda.
