Former judge Michael Luttig has argued correctly that the Constitution refers to impeachment of the president, not the ex‐president. Article II, section 4 provides that “The President … shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” Accordingly, once a person is no longer president, he can’t be impeached or convicted. Our federal government has only those powers enumerated in the Constitution; it does not have the power to impeach a former president.
On the other hand, several legal experts have pointed to Article I, section 3, where the Constitution states that “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States.” Those experts note further that disqualification is a separate vote — requiring only a majority of the Senate, not the two‐thirds required for conviction and removal. Accordingly, the disqualification vote could occur after the president had already been removed.
Ergo, the entirety of the impeachment process, expanded to include disqualification, could apply to an ex‐president. Can those two provisions be reconciled? First, nothing in the Constitution requires that conviction and removal occur simultaneously. The Senate could certainly vote to convict while declaring that removal would occur on a specified future date. Then, between the date of conviction and the date of removal, the Senate could decide whether to disqualify the president from holding future office, in which case the three‐stage process – impeachment, conviction, disqualification – would be complete prior to removal. None of the stages would affect an ex‐president, thereby complying with both of the Articles cited above.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/impeachment-ex-president-unconstitutional
No comments:
Post a Comment