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execution of the Tenure of Office Act, an Army appropriations act, and a Reconstruction act designed by Congress "for the more efficient government of the rebel States." On its face, this article involved statutory violations, but it also reflected the underlying challenge to all of Johnson's post-war policies.

The removal of Stanton was more a catalyst for the impeachment than a fundamental cause." 90 The issue between the President and Congress was which of them should have the constitutional-and ultimately even the military-power to make and enforce Reconstruction policy in the South. The Johnson impeachment, like the British impeachments of great ministers, involved issues of state going to the heart of the constitutional division of executive and legislative power.

2. BEHAVING IN A MANNER GROSSLY INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE PROPER FUNCTION AND PURPOSE OF THE OFFICE

Judge John Pickering was impeached in 1803, largely for intoxication on the bench.91 Three of the articles alleged errors in a trial in violation of his trust and duty as a judge; the fourth charged that Pickering, "being a man of loose morals and intemperate habits," had appeared on the bench during the trial in a state of total intoxication and had used profane language. Seventy-three years later another judge, Mark Delahay, was impeached for intoxication both on and off the bench but resigned before articles of impeachment were adopted.

A similar concern with conduct incompatible with the proper exercise of judicial office appears in the decision of the House to impeach Associate Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in 1804. The House alleged that Justice Chase had permitted his partisan views to influence his conduct of two trials held while he was conducting circuit court several years earlier. The first involved a Pennsylvania farmer who had led a rebellion against a Federal tax collector in 1789 and was later charged with treason. The articles of impeachment alleged that "unmindful of the solemn duties of his office, and contrary to the sacred obligation" of his oath, Chase "did conduct himself in a manner highly arbitrary, oppressive, and unjust," citing procedural rulings against the defense.

Similar language appeared in articles relating to the trial of a Virginia printer indicted under the Sedition Act of 1798. Specific examples of Chase's bias were alleged, and his conduct was characterized as "an indecent solicitude . . . for the conviction of the accused, unbecoming even a public prosecutor but highly disgraceful to the character of a judge, as it was subversive of justice." The eighth article charged that Chase, "disregarding the duties. . . of his judicial chardid. prevert his official right and duty to address the grand jury" by delivering "an intemperate and inflammatory political harangue." His conduct was alleged to be a serious breach of his duty

acter.

and St. Louis, Missouri, article ten pronounced these speeches "censurable in any, [and] peculiarly indecent and unbecoming in the Chief Magistrate of the United States." By means of these speeches, the article concluded, Johnson had brought the high office of the presidency "into contempt, ridicule, and disgrace, to the great scandal of all good citizens."

The Judiciary Committee had reported a resolution of impeachment three months earlier charging President Johnson in its report with omissions of duty, usurpations of power, and violations of his oath of office, the laws and the Constitution in his conflict of Reconstruction. The House voted down the resolution.

The issue of Pickering's insanity was raised at trial in the Senate, but was not discussed by the House when it voted to impeach or to adopt articles of impeachment.

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to judge impartially and to reflect on his competence to continue to exercise the office.

Judge West H. Humphreys was impeached in 1862 on charges that he joined the Confederacy without resigning his federal judgeship.92 Judicial prejudice against Union supporters was also alleged.

Judicial favoritism and failure to give impartial consideration to cases before him were also among the allegations in the impeachment of Judge George W. English in 1926. The final article charged that his favoritism had created distrust of the disinterestedness of his official actions and destroyed public confidence in his court.93

3. EMPLOYING THE POWER OF THE OFFICE FOR AN IMPROPER PURPOSE OR PERSONAL GAIN

Two types of official conduct for improper purposes have been alleged in past impeachments. The first type involves vindictive use of their office by federal judges; the second, the use of office for personal gain.

Judge James H. Peck was impeached in 1826 for charging with contempt a lawyer who had publicly criticized one of his decisions, imprisoning him, and ordering his disbarment for 18 months. The House debated whether this single instance of vindictive abuse of power was sufficient to impeach, and decided that it was, alleging that the conduct was unjust, arbitrary, and beyond the scope of Peck's duty.

Vindictive use of power also constituted an element of the charges in two other impeachments. Judge George W. English was charged in 1926, among other things, with threatening to jail a local newspaper editor for printing a critical editorial and with summoning local officials into court in a non-existent case to harangue them. Some of the articles in the impeachment of Judge Charles Swayne (1903) alleged that he maliciously and unlawfully imprisoned two lawyers and a litigant for contempt.

Six impeachments have alleged the use of office for personal gain or the appearance of financial impropriety while in office. Secretary of War William W. Belknap was impeached in 1876 of high crimes and misdemeanors for conduct that probably constituted bribery and certainly involved the use of his office for highly improper purposesreceiving substantial annual payments through an intermediary in return for his appointing a particular post trader at a frontier military post in Indian territory.

The impeachments of Judges Charles Swayne (1903), Robert W. Archbald (1912), George W. English (1926), Harold Louderback (1932) and Halsted L. Ritter (1936) each involved charges of the use of office for direct or indirect personal monetary gain. In the Archbald and Ritter cases, a number of allegations of improper conduct were combined in a single, final article, as well as being charged separately.

02 Although some of the language in the articles suggested treason, only high crimes and misdemeanors were alleged, and Humphrey's offenses were characterized as a failure to discharge his judicial duties.

3 Some of the allegations against Judges Harold Louderback (1932) and Halsted Ritter (1936) also involved judicial favoritism affecting public confidence in their courts.

Judge Swayne was charged with falsifying expense accounts and using a railroad car in the possession of a receiver he had appointed. Judge Archbald was charged with using his office to secure business favors from litigants and potential litigants before his court. Judges English, Louderback, and Ritter were charged with misusing their power to appoint and set the fees of bankruptcy receivers for personal profit.

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In drawing up articles of impeachment, the House has placed little emphasis on criminal conduct. Less than one-third of the eighty-three articles the House has adopted have explicitly charged the violation of a criminal statute or used the word "criminal" or "crime" to describe the conduct alleged, and ten of the articles that do were those involving the Tenure of Office Act in the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson. The House has not always used the technical language of the criminal law even when the conduct alleged fairly clearly constituted a criminal offense, as in the Humphreys and Belknap impeachments. Moreover, a number of articles, even though they may have alleged that the conduct was unlawful, do not seem to state criminal conduct-including Article Ten against President Andrew Johnson (charging inflammatory speeches), and some of the charges against all of the judges except Humphreys.

Much more common in the articles are allegations that the officer has violated his duties or his oath or seriously undermined public confidence in his ability to perform his official functions. Recitals that a judge has brought his court or the judicial system into disrepute are commonplace. In the impeachment of President Johnson, nine of the articles allege that he acted "unmindful of the high duties of his office and of his oath of office," and several specifically refer to his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.

The formal language of an article of impeachment, however, is less significant than the nature of the allegations that it contains. All have involved charges of conduct incompatible with continued performance of the office; some have explicitly rested upon a "course of conduct" or have combined disparate charges in a single, final article. Some of the individual articles seem to have alleged conduct that, taken alone, would not have been considered serious, such as two articles in the impeachment of Justice Chase that merely alleged procedural errors at trial. In the early impeachments, the articles were not prepared until after impeachment had been voted by the House, and it seems probable that the decision to impeach was made on the basis of all the allegations viewed as a whole, rather than each separate charge. Unlike the Senate, which votes separately on each article after trial, and where conviction on but one article is required for removal from office, the House appears to have considered the individual offenses less significant than what they said together about the conduct of the official in the performance of his duties.

Two tendencies should be avoided in interpreting the American impeachments. The first is to dismiss them too readily because most have involved judges. The second is to make too much of them. They do not all fit neatly and logically into categories. That, however, is in keeping with the nature of the remedy. It is intended to reach a broad variety of conduct by officers that is both serious and incompatible with the duties of the office.

Past impeachments are not precedents to be read with an eye for an article of impeachment identical to allegations that may be currently under consideration. The American impeachment cases demonstrate a common theme useful in determining whether grounds for impeachment exist that the grounds are derived from understanding the nature, functions and duties of the office.

III. The Criminality Issue

The phrase "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" may connote "criminality" to some. This likely is the predicate for some of the contentions that only an indictable crime can constitute impeachable conduct. Other advocates of an indictable-offense requirement would establish a criminal standard of impeachable conduct because that standard is definite, can be known in advance and reflects a contemporary legal view of what conduct should be punished. A requirement of criminality would require resort to familiar criminal laws and concepts to serve as standards in the impeachment process. Furthermore, this would pose problems concerning the applicability of standards of proof and the like pertaining to the trial of crimes.1

The central issue raised by these concerns is whether requiring an indictable offense as an essential element of impeachable conduct is consistent with the purposes and intent of the framers in establishing the impeachment power and in setting a constitutional standard for the exercise of that power. This issue must be considered in light of the historical evidence of the framers' intent.2 It is also useful to consider whether the purposes of impeachment and criminal law are such that indictable offenses can, consistent with the Constitution, be an essential element of grounds for impeachment. The impeachment of a President must occur only for reasons at least as pressing as those needs of government that give rise to the creation of criminal offenses. But this does not mean that the various elements of proof, defenses, and other substantive concepts surrounding an indictable offense control the impeachment process. Nor does it mean that state or federal criminal codes are necessarily the place to turn to provide a standard under the United States Constitution. Impeachment is a constitutional remedy, The framers intended that the impeachment language they employed should reflect the grave misconduct that so injures or abuses our constitutional institutions and form of government as to justify impeach

ment.

This view is supported by the historical evidence of the constitutional meaning of the words "high Crimes and Misdemeanors." That evidence is set out above. It establishes that the phrase "high Crimes and Misdemeanors"-which over a period of centuries evolved into the English standard of impeachable conduct-has a special historical meaning different from the ordinary meaning of the terms "crimes" and "misdemeanors." "High misdemeanors" referred to a

1 See A. Simpson, A Treatise on Federal Impeachments 28-29 (1916). It has also been argued that because Treason and Bribery are crimes, "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" must refer to crimes under the ejusdem generis rule of construction. But ejusdem generis merely requires a unifying principle. The question here is whether that principle is criminality or rather conduct subversive of our constitutional institutions and form of government.

The rule of construction against redundancy indicates an intent not to require criminality. If criminality is required, the word "Misdemeanors" would add nothing to "high Crimes."

3 See part II.B. supra, pp. 7-17.

See part II.B.2. supra, pp. 11-13.

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category of offenses that subverted the system of government. Since the fourteenth century the phrase "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" had been used in English impeachment cases to charge officials with a wide range of criminal and non-criminal offenses against the institutions and fundamental principles of English government.5

There is evidence that the framers were aware of this special, noncriminal meaning of the phrase "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" in the English law of impeachment. Not only did Hamilton acknowledge Great Britain as "the model from which [impeachment] has been borrowed," but George Mason referred in the debates to the impeachment of Warren Hastings, then pending before Parliament. Indeed, Mason, who proposed the phrase "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," expressly stated his intent to encompass "[a]ttempts to subvert the Constitution.""

The published records of the state ratifying conventions do not reveal an intention to limit the grounds of impeachment to criminal offenses. James Iredell said in the North Carolina debates on ratification:

the person convicted is further liable to a trial at common law, and may receive such common-law punishment as belongs to a description of such offences if it be punishable by that law.9

Likewise, George Nicholas of Virginia distinguished disqualification to hold office from conviction for criminal conduct:

If [the President] deviates from his duty, he is responsible to his constituents. . . . He will be absolutely disqualified to hold any place of profit, honor, or trust, and liable to further punishment if he has committed such high crimes as are punishable at common law.10

The post-convention statements and writings of Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, and James Madison-each a participant in the Constitutional Convention-show that they regarded impeachment as an appropriate device to deal with offenses against constitutional government by those who hold civil office, and not a device limited to criminal offenses." Hamilton, in discussing the advantages of a single rather than a plural executive, explained that a single executive gave the people "the opportunity of discovering with facility and clearness the misconduct of the persons they trust, in order either to their removal from office, or to their actual punishment in cases which admit of it." 12 Hamilton further wrote: "Man, in public trust, will much oftener act in such a manner as to render him unworthy of being any longer trusted, than in such a manner as to make him obnoxious to legal punishment." 13

The American experience with impeachment, which is summarized above, reflects the principle that impeachable conduct need not be

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