Impeachment - Wikipedia
United States
Similar to the British system,
Article One of the United States Constitution gives the House of Representatives the sole power of impeachment and the Senate the sole power to try impeachments of
officers of the U.S. national government. (Various
stateconstitutions include similar measures, allowing the state legislature to impeach the governor or other officials of the state government.) In contrast to the British system, in the United States impeachment is only the first of two stages, and conviction during the second stage requires a two-thirds majority vote. Impeachment does not necessarily result in removal from office; it is only a legal statement of charges, parallel to an
indictment in
criminal law. An official who is impeached faces a second legislative vote (whether by the same body or another), which determines conviction, or failure to convict, on the charges embodied by the impeachment. Most constitutions require a
supermajority to convict. Although the subject of the charge is criminal action, it does not constitute a criminal trial; the only question under consideration is the removal of the individual from office, and the possibility of a subsequent vote preventing the removed official from ever again holding political office in the jurisdiction where he or she was removed. Impeachment with respect to political office should not be confused with
witness impeachment.
Impeachable offensesEdit
The Constitution defines impeachment at the federal level and limits impeachment to "The President, Vice President, and all civil officers of the United States" who may be impeached and removed only for "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors".
[26] Several commentators have suggested that
Congress alone may decide for itself what constitutes a "high crime or misdemeanor", especially since
Nixon v. United States stated that the Supreme Court did not have the authority to determine whether the Senate properly "tried" a defendant.
[27] In 1970, then-
House Minority Leader Gerald R. Ford defined the criterion as he saw it: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history."
[28]
