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Impeachment Power
Impeachment is a constitutional process that the nation's founders created to provide Congress with the ultimate authority to check abuses of power. The impeachment method allows Congress to remove officials who are found guilty of serious misconduct.
Congress has invoked this severe penalty sparingly. Only seven federal officials, all judges, have been removed from office through the impeachment process in more than two centuries. Others resigned voluntarily rather than risk impeachment, and thus the purpose of the impeachment process was fulfilled, if not in the precise manner the framers of the Constitution envisioned.
Of the three presidents who have faced impeachment inquiries, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached by the House but acquitted by the Senate, and Richard Nixon resigned, becoming the first president in history to resign in order to avoid near-certain impeachment and removal from office.
The impeachment process is similar to an indictment and trial in the criminal court system. First, the House of Representatives approves formal charges, called articles of impeachment, against an official accused of wrongdoing. House members then prosecute the case in a trial held in the Senate chamber. The Senate is judge and jury. The penalty upon conviction is removal from office. There is no appeal.
Tickets to impeachment: (top) ticket that allowed admittance to the Senate galleries for the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson in 1868; (bottom) tickets to the Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999.
Closer Look
Impeachment involves two steps. First, the House of Representatives approves formal charges, called articles of impeachment, against an official. House members then prosecute the case in a trial held in the Senate. The Senate decides the outcome: either acquittal or removal from office. There is no appeal.
By 2013, the three most powerful officials impeached by the House were Supreme Court justice Samuel Chase in 1805, President Johnson in 1868, and President Clinton in 1998. Chase and Johnson were acquitted by the Senate after sensational trials. With the likely outcome known beforehand, Clinton was acquitted in an anticlimactic trial in 1999. The overwhelming majority of impeachment proceedings have been directed against federal judges. Because they hold lifetime appointments “during good behavior,” federal judges cannot be removed by any other means.
Constitutional Background
The impeachment process outlined in the Constitution had its origins in fourteenth-century England, where Parliament used the procedure to gain authority over the king's advisers. Impeachment was used against ministers and judges whom Parliament believed guilty of breaking the law or carrying out unpopular orders of the king. The king himself was considered incapable of wrongdoing and therefore could not be impeached.
The framers of the U.S. Constitution embraced impeachment “as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men,” in the words of Alexander Hamilton. Details of the process were not settled until the closing days of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when the delegates determined that “the president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States” should be subject to impeachment. Conviction was to be followed by “removal from office” and possibly by “disqualification to hold” office in the future.
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