A sitting President may be criminally indicted, tried, and convicted—all without having first been impeached and removed from office.
Michael Stokes Paulsen
All civil officers constitutionally can be indicted, tried, and even sentenced for commission of federal crimes, whether they have been impeached or not.
The argument that popular understanding alters constitutional meaning is really just another form of the argument against written constitutionalism.
Impeachment practice tells us almost nothing – and nothing at all clear or authoritative – that would “settle” the Constitution’s meaning.
To object that the use of impeachment power is “anti-democratic” is to miss the point: democracy yields to the Constitution, not the other way around.
Has our system degenerated to the point that a president, once in office, can do whatever he wants as long as thirty-four senators support him?
Abuse is bound to happen with any government power, but that isn't a real objection against providing the power to impeach federal officials.
Impeachment was designed with the idea in mind that presidents sometimes might warrant removal from office, and this might flow from many causes.
Does the practice of impeachment in the early American republic offer guidance to understand "high crimes and misdemeanors" today?
Nearly all of the historical evidence favors a broad, political view of the impeachment power.
What was controversial and what needed defending in The Federalist essays on impeachment was placing the power in the Senate, not the power itself.
How the debates at the Constitutional Convention concerning impeachment clarify "high crimes and misdemeanors."
In understanding what the Constitution means by "High Crimes and Misdemeanors," we should look to original meaning, not matters of intent.
We need to take a broad view of the propriety of presidential impeachments.
A review of thirty years of scholarship on why judicial impeachment - even on partisan grounds - is permissible.
Thinking about whether Burr could have been impeached for Hamilton's death can help us unpack many complex issues about what qualifies as legitimate grounds.
If we want to understand impeachment, we need to think seriously about the original public meaning of the term.
The framers of the Constitution understood impeachment as a vital, potent legislative check on abuse or misuse of power or other serious misconduct.
Forcing pro-life nonprofits to promote abortion is a shocking violation of the First Amendment.
On the 150th anniversary of Andrew Johnson's trial in the Senate, we should remember that impeaching the president isn't only about specific crimes.
Why do we teach “Constitutional Law” in law schools? What is the point, really? Do we teach Constitutional Law in order to teach legal methodology and sound legal reasoning? (That question probably begs laughter.) Or is it to teach knowledge deemed essential for “citizenship” in some sense, and especially for lawyer-citizenship – kind of a “Civics for Lawyers” rationale?
Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law at the University of St. Thomas, where he has taught since 2007. He is co-author, with Luke Paulsen, of The Constitution: An Introduction (Basic Books, 2015).