What does it mean to impeach a president? Impeachment is the process by which any federal official can be charged for doing something wrong and then removed from office.
When we think of impeachment, we probably think of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump being impeached. Or perhaps we think of Richard Nixon resigning before he could be impeached. However, impeachment is not a process just for presidents. We remember those events because when a president is impeached, it is huge news.
The process of impeachment came into America from the UK, but the tradition didn’t start there. In the Roman senate, it was possible to impeach a sitting senator. Any senator could accuse and impeach another senator, but it was quite rare. The accuser had to prove the guilt of the accused and if they were found guilty by a majority of the senators, they would be expelled from the senate. The word “impeach” comes from the Latin “impedicare”, which meant “to catch, or to entangle”. It went from Latin into French, as “empecher”, and then into English, originally as “empeachen”, before the spelling changed to the modern “impeach”. The word “impede” has the same origin. Senators in Rome were senators for life and were generally rich members of society. Once Rome became an empire, the senators had no power to impeach an emperor. The emperor was emperor for life and was above the senate, no matter what.
The first recorded use of impeachment in western law was the removal of William Latimer, 4th Baron Latimer in 1376. The reason that Roman senators couldn’t impeach the emperor was that the power lay entirely in the hands of the emperor. Any senator who tried to remove an emperor would not have a happy ending. This was the same throughout history until roughly the 13th century, when the parliament of England began to wield more power. The sovereign in England had been supreme until the barons revolted and forced King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215. This made the sovereign subject to the laws of the land. The ongoing crusades increased parliamentary power because the king needed parliament to raise money for his campaigns. By 1376, parliament had enough power to remove people appointed by the king. They couldn’t remove the king, who held a god given role, but they could remove other people. William Latimer was impeached for corruption, and he was removed from his various positions at court. He was later pardoned, but the first impeachment in law had happened.
The first impeachment of a head of state was King Charles I. Parliament had become powerful enough to take on the sovereign. Charles I was impeached for attempting to “subvert the fundamental Laws and Liberties of this Nation”. Parliament had tried to stop Charles, so he had dismissed parliament. They both raised armies and fought each other. Charles lost and parliament decided to impeach him. It wasn’t an easy choice, and they spent a lot of time talking about it, but they decided to impeach him and he was charged, found guilty, and beheaded. Any modern president wouldn’t be beheaded, but the precedent of King Charles I being impeached made it possible for the system to exist today. The important thing that parliament realized was that they were not impeaching the sovereign, they were impeaching the person who currently held the role of sovereign. They weren’t impeaching King Charles I, they were impeaching Charles Stuart. When Bill Clinton was impeached, the senate wasn’t impeaching President Bill Clinton, they were impeaching Bill Clinton, the man who currently held the role of president. The law exists to show that a position can be above the law, but the person who occupies that position cannot.
Because the person who is occupying the position is being charged and not the position itself, things like executive privilege can’t be used. Donald Trump said that all of his documents were secret, and Congress couldn’t see them because of executive privilege. This doesn’t apply though, and the case against Charles I shows why. Charles I said that he was the sovereign and therefore could not be tried. He said that all of the laws were in his name and the treason with which he was charged was specifically a crime against the king’s person. Parliament looked at this argument and they realized that treason was a crime against the position of the king, and not the king himself. Therefore, the person occupying the position of king could very easily commit treason against the position of king. For that reason, he was tried as a normal person and none of his executive privilege applied.
The idea of impeachment was carried across to America with the first settlers and was written into the constitution. It is actually in the constitution in four different places. The process is fairly straightforward. The House of Representatives has to bring charges against the president (or any other official). The House of Representatives vote on the charges and if there is a majority, the president is impeached. A trial of the president is then held in the senate. After the trial, the senators vote and if there is a two-thirds majority, the president is removed from office. So far, there have been four impeachment trials of presidents: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump in 2019 and 2021. The senate was one vote short of the two-thirds majority with Andrew Johnson. Clinton and Trump were much further away. The problem is, unless the president has done something truly terrible, their party will pretty much always side with them, and the two-thirds majority will be impossible. If Nixon hadn’t resigned, he would probably have been the first president to be removed. If Trump wins again in November, I wonder how long it will be before he is impeached again. And this is what I learned today.
Image By Bob McNeely, The White House[1] – This image was released by the United States Armed Forces with the ID DD-SC-93-04622 (next). Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=231792
Sources
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/three-lessons-first-time-head-state-was-impeached
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_of_the_Roman_Empire
https://www.etymonline.com/word/impeachment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Latimer,_4th_Baron_Latimer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment
https://www.senate.gov/about/powers-procedures/impeachment.htm