Under the Constitution, the House of Representatives has the power to impeach a government official, in effect serving as prosecutor. The Senate then holds the impeachment trial, essentially serving as jury and judge, except in the impeachment of a president when the chief justice presides.

The president, vice president, and all civil officers of the United States are subject to impeachment.

The concept of impeachment originated in England and was adopted by many of the American colonial governments and state constitutions. At the Constitutional Convention, the framers considered several possible models before deciding that the Senate should try impeachments.

Since 1789 only 17 federal officers have been impeached by the House, 14 of which were tried by the Senate. Three were dismissed before trial because the individual had left office, 7 ended in acquittal and 7 in conviction. All of those convicted were federal judges.

The United States Constitution provides that the House of Representatives "shall have the sole Power of Impeachment." (Article I, section 2) and that "the Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments .... [but] no person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two-thirds of the Members present." (Article I, section 3)

Impeachment is a very serious affair. It is perhaps the most awesome power of Congress, the ultimate weapon it wields against officials of the federal government. The House of Representatives is the prosecutor. The Senate chamber is the courtroom. The Senate is the jury and also the judge, except in the case of a presidential impeachment trial when the chief justice presides. The harshest penalty is removal from office and disqualification from holding future offices. There is no appeal.

So grave is this power of impeachment, and so conscious is the Congress of this solemn power, that impeachment proceedings have been initiated in the House only sixty-two times since 1789. Only seventeen federal officers have been impeached: two presidents, one cabinet officer, one senator and thirteen federal judges. Sixteen cases have reached the Senate. Of these, two were dismissed before trial because the individuals had left office, seven ended in acquittal, and seven in conviction. Each of the seven Senate convictions has involved a federal judge.

Constitutional Origins

In Federalist 65, Alexander Hamilton called impeachment a process designed "as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men." Hamilton and his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention, who hammered out the provisions for impeachment, knew that the history of impeachment as a constitutional process dated from fourteenth-century England, when the fledgling Parliament sought to make the king's advisers accountable. By the mid-fifteenth century, impeachment had fallen into disuse in England, but, in the early seventeenth century, the excesses of the Stuart kings prompted Parliament to revive its impeachment power. Even as the Constitution's framers toiled in Philadelphia, the impeachment trial of Warren Hastings was in progress in London and avidly followed in America. Hastings, who was eventually acquitted, was charged with oppression, bribery, and fraud as colonial administrator and first governor general in India.

The American colonial governments and early state constitutions followed the British pattern of trial before the upper legislative body on charges brought by the lower house. Despite these precedents, a major controversy arose at the Constitutional Convention about whether the Senate should act as the court of impeachment. Opposing that role for the Senate, James Madison and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney asserted that it would make the president too dependent on the legislative branch. They suggested, as alternative trial bodies, the Supreme Court or the chief justices of the state supreme courts. Hamilton and others argued, however, that such bodies would be too small and susceptible to corruption. In the end, after much wrangling, the framers selected the Senate as the trial forum. To Hamilton fell the task of explaining the convention's decision. In Federalist 65, he argued:

The Convention thought the Senate the most fit depository of this important trust. Where else than in the Senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? What other body would be likely to feel confidence enough in its own situation, to preserve unawed and uninfluenced the necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the representatives of the people, his accusers?

There was also considerable debate at the convention in Philadelphia over the definition of impeachable crimes. In the original proposals, the president was to be removed on impeachment and conviction "for mal or corrupt conduct," or for "malpractice or neglect of duty." Later, the wording was changed to "treason, bribery, or corruption," then to "treason or bribery" alone. Contending that "treason or bribery" were too narrow, George Mason proposed adding "mal-administration," but switched to "other high crimes and misdemeanors against the state" when Madison said that "mal-administration" was too broad. A final revision defined impeachable crimes as "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors."

In the Constitution, the House is given the "sole power of impeachment." To the Senate is given "the sole power to try all impeachments." Impeachments may be brought against "the President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States."

While the framers very clearly envisaged the occasional necessity of initiating impeachment proceedings, they put in place only a very general framework, leaving many questions open to differences of opinion and many details to be filled in. Despite the open-endedness, as Peter Charles Hoffer and N.E.H. Hull note in their book Impeachment in America 1635-1805, thanks to the framers: a tool used in Parliament to curb kings and punish placemen was molded into an efficient legislative check upon executive and judicial wrongdoing. The power of the English House of Commons to impeach anyone, for almost any alleged offense, was restrained; the threat of death and forfeiture upon conviction was lifted; and the interference of the Commons and the House of Lords with the regular courts of justice was limited. American impeachment law shifted, at first inadvertently and then deliberately, from the orbit of English precedent to a native republican course. Federal constitutional provisions for impeachment reflected indigenous experience and revolutionary tenets instead of English tradition.

Impact of Resignation

Throughout the Congress' two hundred years, several major questions have dogged impeachment proceedings. One concerns resignations. In general, the resignation of an official puts an end to impeachment proceedings because the primary objective, removal from office, has been accomplished. This was the case in the impeachment proceedings begun in 1974 against President Richard Nixon. However, resignation has not always been a foolproof way to preclude impeachment, as Secretary of War William Belknap found out in 1876. Belknap, tipped off in advance that a House committee had unearthed information implicating him in the acceptance of bribes in return for lucrative Indian trading posts, rushed to the White House and tearfully begged President Ulysses Grant to accept his resignation at ten o'clock on the morning of March 2, 1876. Around three o'clock that afternoon, representatives, furious at both the president and Belknap for thwarting them, impeached Belknap by voice vote anyway. The Senate debated the question of its jurisdiction, in light of Belknap's resignation, and decided by a vote of 37 to 29 that he could be impeached. But at the end of Belknap's sensational trial in the summer of 1876, he was found not guilty of the charges, not because the senators believed him innocent (most did not), but because most had decided they in fact had no jurisdiction over Belknap, then a private citizen.

Definition of Offenses

Another question, the one debated most hotly by members of Congress, defense attorneys, and legal scholars from the first impeachment trial to the most recent trial of President William Clinton, concerns the issue of what exactly is an impeachable offense. The task of definition left to future legislators by the framers has proved perplexing. Treason and bribery, the two constitutionally designated impeachable crimes, were clear cut. But what were "high crimes and misdemeanors?" Were misdemeanors lesser crimes, or merely misconducts? Did a high crime or misdemeanor have to be a violation of written law? Over the years, "high crimes and misdemeanors" have been anything the prosecutors have wanted them to be. In an unsuccessful attempt to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas in 1960, Representative Gerald Ford declared: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history." The phrase is the subject of continuing debate, pitting broad constructionists, who view impeachment as a political weapon, against narrow constructionists, who regard impeachment as being limited to offenses indictable at common law.

Narrow constructionists won a major victory when Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase was acquitted in 1805, using as his defense the argument that the charges against him were not based on any indictable offense. President Andrew Johnson won acquittal with a similar defense in 1868. But the first two convictions in the twentieth century, those of Judge Robert Archbald in 1913 and Judge Halsted Ritter in 1936, neither of whom had committed indictable offenses, made it clear that the broad constructionists still carried considerable weight. The debate continued during the 1974 investigation into the conduct of President Nixon, with the staff of the House Judiciary Committee arguing for a broad view of "high crimes and misdemeanors" while Nixon's defense attorneys understandably argued for a narrow view.

Over the course of the nation's history, several impeachment cases have been instrumental in the further evolution of the process.

Andrew Johnson

The bitter animosities growing out of the Civil War gave rise to the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson, the most famous of all impeachment trials prior to that of President William Clinton in 1999. The first presidential impeachment in American history occurred in 1868. At the heart of the Johnson case, just as in earlier cases, lay issues far larger than the individuals involved. The Johnson case revolved around the crisis of Reconstruction after the war.

When Johnson succeeded to the presidency in 1865, his ideas for a mild Reconstruction of the southern states clashed with the wishes of a majority of the Congress, controlled by Radical Republicans who favored much stronger action. Throughout 1866, Johnson and Congress were locked in battle.

The Tenure of Office Act, the violation of which was to be the legal basis for impeachment, was passed over Johnson's veto on March 2, 1867. It forbade the president to remove civil officers appointed with the consent of the Senate without the approval of the Senate. Despite the certain consequences, Johnson decided to rid himself of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, an ally of the Radicals. On August 12, 1867, Johnson suspended Stanton, an act that enraged the Radical Republicans and set in motion events that led the House to vote eleven articles of impeachment against the president.

Johnson's Senate trial began on March 5, 1868, with the defense immediately claiming the necessity of an indictable offense for impeachment. On May 16, after weeks of venomous argument, the Senate took a test vote on Article XI, a catch-all charge thought by the House managers most likely to produce a vote for conviction. The drama of the vote has become legendary. With 36 "guiltys" needed for conviction, the final count was guilty, 35; not guilty, 19. Seven Republicans joined the twelve Democrats in supporting Johnson. Stunned by the setback, the Radicals postponed voting until May 26, when votes on Articles II and III produced identical 35-to-19 tallies. To head off further defeats, the Radicals moved to adjourn sine die, and the motion was adopted 34 to 16, abruptly ending the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson.

Charles Swayne

Florida District Judge Charles Swayne was impeached in 1905. He was accused of filing false travel vouchers, improper use of private railroad cars, unlawfully imprisoning two attorneys for contempt, and living outside of his district. Swayne's trial consumed two-and-a-half months before it ended on February 27, 1905, when the Senate voted acquittal on each of the twelve articles. There was little doubt that Swayne was guilty of some of the offenses charged against him. Indeed, his counsel admitted as much, though calling the lapses "inadvertent." The Senate, however, refused to convict Swayne because its members did not believe his peccadilloes amounted to "high crimes and misdemeanors."

It was during the long Swayne trial that the suggestion first surfaced that a Senate committee, rather than the Senate as a whole, should receive impeachment evidence. Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts proposed that the presiding officer should appoint such a committee. While Hoar's proposal would eventually be embodied in Rule XI of the Senate's impeachment rules, in 1905 the resolution was referred to the Rules Committee, which took no action.

Robert W. Archibald

The next impeachment trial was that of Judge Robert W. Archbald of the Commerce Court in 1913. Archbald was charged with numerous and serious acts of misconduct stretching over many years, including using his office to obtain advantageous business deals and free trips to Europe. As in the Swayne case, not one of the thirteen articles charged an indictable offense. Yet, apparently because of the seriousness and extent of his crimes, many of which he acknowledged, Archbald was convicted on five of thirteen articles. Alexander Simpson, Archbald's counsel, noted that the decision "determined that a judge ought not only to be impartial, but he ought so to demean himself, both in and out of the court, that litigants will have no reason to suspect his impartiality; and that repeatedly failing in that respect constituted a 'high misdemeanor'." After the Archbald trial concluded, his counsel also suggested that impeachment evidence be taken by a Senate committee. Simpson argued that many senators were not in attendance when evidence was taken before the full Senate and thus relied on the printed Congressional Record.

Harold Louderback

In 1933, the House Judiciary Committee recommended censure, rather than impeachment, for federal judge Harold Louderback of California. A minority of the committee, however, took the issue to the floor of the House where they persuaded that body to adopt five articles of impeachment, charging Louderback with favoritism and conspiracy in the appointment of bankruptcy receivers. Louderback's Senate trial consumed nearly all of May 1933, during the New Deal's Hundred Days, one of the busiest legislative periods in congressional history. A long parade of witnesses, including a faith healer who had to be brought into the chamber on a stretcher, filed through to testify. Democrats charged Republicans with using the trial to delay a banking reform bill, a charge Republicans denied. Tempers in the Senate frayed as witness after witness cast doubt on the charges. When the Senate finally voted on May 24, 1933, Louderback was acquitted on all five articles. Only on the fifth and last charge, a summation of the preceding four, did the vote even reach a majority, still eight votes short of the two-thirds needed for conviction.

Rule XI

The trial of Judge Louderback again brought to the fore the problem of attendance at impeachment trials. After the trial, Representative Hatton Sumners of Texas, one of the House managers, recalled the scanty attendance: "At one time only three senators were present, and for ten days we presented evidence to what was practically an empty chamber." In 1934, Senator Henry Ashurst of Arizona, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, offered the resolution that became Rule XI after its adoption the following year. The key words of Rule XI provide:

That in the trial of any impeachment the Presiding Officer of the Senate, if the Senate so orders, shall appoint a committee of senators to receive evidence and take testimony at such times and places as the committee may determine . . .

Halsted Ritter

Rule XI was not used in the next impeachment trial, that of Florida District Judge Halsted Ritter in 1936. Ritter was charged with a wide range of improprieties that included practicing law while a judge, filing false income tax returns, extortion, and an omnibus charge of misconduct. Ritter's counsel argued that the judge had committed no offense that could be labeled a high crime or misdemeanor and was guilty only of exercising "poor judgement." In fact, Ritter was found "not guilty" by narrow margins on each of first six charges. On the seventh, however, the omnibus article combining the previous six, Ritter was found guilty, by exactly the required two-thirds vote, of bringing, by his combined actions, "his court into scandal and disrepute." Said the New York Times of the decision: "The Senate is putting judges on notice that they will be removed if the sum total of their crimes shows unfitness for the bench regardless of whether a specific high crime or misdemeanor could be established under ordinary rules of evidence."

Richard Nixon

In the summer of 1974 it looked very much as though there might soon be an impeachment trial for a president of the United States, Richard Nixon. The events of those weeks precipitated a more thorough scrutiny of the Senate's impeachment rules than they had previously undergone. In July 1974, the Senate adopted a resolution directing the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration to review the existing impeachment rules and precedents and recommend revisions. The committee devoted long hours to serious reflection about the solemn duty the Senate believed it might be called upon to perform. The committee was meeting on August 8, when President Nixon announced that he would resign the next day. Nevertheless, the panel continued with its work under a mandate from the Senate to file a report by September 1. The report contained recommendations that were primarily technical changes in the rules that had been adopted in 1868 for the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson. With the resignation of President Nixon, no further action was taken. The recommendations, however, were resurrected in 1986 and helped inform the debates on how to conduct the trials that resulted in the removal of three federal judges between 1986 and 1989, and again in 1999 when the Senate faced its second presidential impeachment trial.

William Clinton

On December 19, 1998, the House of Representatives approved two articles of impeachment against President William J. Clinton, claiming the president had "willfully corrupted and manipulated the judicial process." The Senate trial began on January 14, 1999, and once again arguments focused on the definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors." Falling short of the necessary two-thirds vote on either article of impeachment (Article I, 55 to 45; Article II, 50 to 50), the Senate acquitted President Clinton on February 12, 1999.

For Further Reading

Benedict, Michael Les, The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson (New York: W.W. Norton, 1973).

Berger, Raoul, Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973).

Robert C. Byrd, The Senate, 1789-1989 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1991).

Michael J. Gerhardt, The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

Hoffer, Peter Charles and N.E.H. Hull, Impeachment in America, 1635-1805 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984).

Buckner Melton, Jr., The First Impeachment: The Constitution's Framers and the Case of Senator William Blount (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998).

William H. Rehnquist, Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justices Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson (New York: William Morrow, 1992).

U.S. Senate. Procedure and Guidelines for Impeachment Trials in the United States Senate, by Floyd M. Riddick and Robert Dove, S. Doc. 93-102, 93d Cong., 2d sess., 1974.

U.S. Senate. Senate Manual. [latest edition]. See "Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials," revised August 16, 1986.

William Blount, Senator

Date of Final Senate Action: January 11, 1799

Result:  expelled, charges dismissed

_______________________________

John Pickering, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action: March 12, 1804

Result: guilty, removed from office

_______________________________

Samuel Chase, Justice

Date of Final Senate Action:  March 1, 1805

Result:  not guilty

_______________________________

James H. Peck, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  January 31, 1831

Result:  not guilty

_______________________________

West H. Humphreys, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  June 26, 1862

Result:  guilty

_______________________________

Andrew Johnson, President

Date of Final Senate Action:  May 16/26, 1868

Result:  not guilty

_______________________________

Mark H. Delahay, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  no action

Result:  resigned

_______________________________

William Belknap, Secretary of War

Date of Final Senate Action:  August 1, 1876

Result:  not guilty

_______________________________

Charles Swayne, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  February 27, 1905

Result:  not guilty

_______________________________

Robert Archbald, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  January 13, 1913

Result:  guilty, removed

_______________________________

George W. English, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  December 13, 1926

Result: resigned, charges dismissed

_______________________________

Harold Louderback, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  May 24, 1933

Result:  not guilty

_______________________________

Halsted Ritter, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  April 17, 1936

Result:  guilty, removed from office

_______________________________

Harry E. Claiborne, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action: October 9, 1986

Result:  guilty, removed from office

_______________________________

Alcee Hastings, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  October 20, 1989

Result:  guilty, removed from office

_______________________________

Walter Nixon, Judge

Date of Final Senate Action:  November 3, 1989

Result:  guilty, removed from office

_______________________________

William J. Clinton, President

Date of Final Senate Action:  February 12, 1999

Result:  not guilty

_______________________________