#65-66: Impeachment power in the Senate

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Numbers 65 and 66 explain the scheme for impeaching corrupt elected officials. The House of Representatives can bring charges against such a person — but the Senate decides whether the convict or exhonerate. Hamilton’s main point in discussing this arrangement, it seems, is that there’s no way to know what’s best:

Where is the measure or criterion to which we can appeal, for determining what will give the Senate too much, too little, or barely the proper degree of influence?

If mankind were to resolve to agree in no institution of government, until every part of it had been adjusted to the most exact standard of perfection, society would soon become a general scene of anarchy, and the world a desert. Where is the standard of perfection to be found?

He justifies giving the impeachment power to the Senate — rather than to the Supreme Court or to the House or to the states or to some special ad hoc group that could be pulled together whenever needed. Those were all possibilities, but they all have problems. The main problem, which applies to the Senate as well as to all the alternatives, he says, is that partisan politics will prevent any high elected official from getting unbiased judgement.

A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses 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. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.

Well, he’s right. Partisan politics has kept fair and wise use of the impeachment from happening. The proceedings gainst Donald Trump were certainly shaped by partisan politics. No one from either party or any outside perspective would say the Trump impeachment process was fair, unbiased and focused purely on learning the truth and acting justly.

Impeachment has been described as a course of action so extreme and harmful that it shouldn’t be seriously considered ever. That’s an odd perspective, though. To begin with, the founders put impeachment into the Constitution. So they certainly meant it to be used. More importantly, impeachment has been used 19 times. Nineteen people have been indicted by the House and tried by the Senate, the last as recently as 2010. Only two were presidents. The rest were federal judges, cabinet members and a US Senator. But the impeachment process has been used several times.

Discuss

  • The founders put impeachment into the Constitution. Do you think they intended Congress to use it more, or less, than they have?

  • Is impeachment even necessary? Isn’t it enough that the voters will get to vote a corrupts official out of office?