teously to confirm the appointment of one of their own number, and that, too, without the usual reference to the Judiciary Committee for investigation. The Dignity of the Senate relates to the honor and respect which the Senate assumes by its forms and behavior. It seeks to cultivate those qualities, or aspects, The Dignity of the Senate designed to promote the position of the Senate, and reverence due to the body. It involves exclusion and privilege. It requires that a Senator's honorable position shall be respected. Outsiders and spectators must not be familiar. They may not only not take part in the proceedings, but they may not indicate by any applause or sign of dissent that they are aware that there are any proceedings. They may make no demonstration of any kind to influence or control the assembly. Otherwise the Senate might lose its personality, individuality, and dignity, and be reduced to a mass-meeting, or common political gathering. It is thought that in late years the Senate has declined in this respect, as it has frequently allowed crowded and excited audiences to applaud and hiss in its galleries; and it has been asked whether we are approaching the time when the gallery loafer will be allowed to arise and correct the orator on the floor of the Senate, or interrupt him by interjections. Senate. When the Senate divides or votes on a question, the roll of the Senate is called alphabetically. The Senators may vote viva voce, or, in accordance with the Divisions in Constitution, one fifth of the Senators present may demand that the Yeas and Nays be entered upon the journal. In the British Parliament the members, in a division, pass into the lobby and are counted as they pass between two tellers. On the matter of impeachment the Constitu tion provides that: (1) The Senate shall have the sole power to try impeachments. Provisions of the Constitution on Impeachment. When sitting for this purpose the Senators shall be on oath or affirmation. (2) The House has the sole power to impeach. (3) When the President is tried on impeachment the Chief Justice shall preside. (4) A two-thirds vote is necessary to conviction. (5) Judgment in case of conviction extends only to removal from office and disqualification to hold any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States; the party convicted shall be liable to indictment, trial, judgment, and punishment according to law. (6) The President, Vice-President, and all civil officers of the United States shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. ing the Senate In the making of the Constitution there were objections to conferring the power of trying impeachments Original Objec- upon the Senate: (1) It would unite legislative tions to Mak- and judicial functions. (2) It would unduly the Court in accumulate power in the Senate and tend to Impeachment. establish an aristocracy. (3) The Senators would judge too leniently officers for whose confirmation they had voted. (4) Senators might be called upon to try one another for corrupt use of the treaty-making power.' These objections were all answered in the Federalist, and experience has proven them untenable. It was suggested in the Convention of 1787 that the Supreme Court would be a better tribunal than the SenThe Supreme ate for impeachment trials, especially for the trial of the President; for, if the Senate were allowed to remove the President on impeachImpeachment. ment preferred by the House, this would make the Executive too dependent on the legislative department, and would interfere with the President's power to Court Suggested as the Court of 'On the subject of impeachment, consult Foster on the Constitution, and the Federalist, Nos. 65 and 66. check the legislature. It was answered that the judges would not form a competent court for presidential impeachment, as they were dependent on the President for appointment. It was understood, when the Senate was given the power to try impeachments, that the Senators were on their oaths to act, not from any political or party bias, but entirely in a judicial capacity, as impartial judges. That the Senate may be depended upon to show a fair and Purely Judicial judicial disposition in this respect was demon In Impeachment Cases the Senate Is to Act in a Capacity. strated in the celebrated impeachment trial of President Johnson. Seven Republican Senators voted, not for conviction, as party pressure was urging them to do, but for acquittal, as they judged the law and the evidence demanded. Only the President, Vice-President, and "civil officers" of the United States can be impeached. Who are “civil officers of the United States"? The word Who are "civil" is used in contradistinction to "mili- Impeachable? tary," consequently officers of the army and navy are exempt from impeachment. The reason for exempting military and naval officers is that they are subject to trial and punishment by military law and usages.' Representatives Not Senators and Representatives are not "civil officers of the United States" and are therefore not impeachable.' This was the decision in Blount's case in 1798. The only remedy for the misconduct of a member Senators and of either House of Congress during his term of office is expulsion by his colleagues. In Impeachable. Blount's case, while impeachment was pending, he was expelled from the Senate for the offence charged against him. After his expulsion Blount pleaded in his impeachment trial that the Senate had no jurisdiction. 1 Story on the Constitution, § 792, cited by Foster, p. 570. 'The Congressmen represent the people; they receive their commissions directly from the people. They are the officers of the people of a State, and not of the United States. They may do official duty with reference to the United States, as some other State officers do now; but they are stil The Senate sustained this plea by a vote of fourteen to eleven, and the impeachment was dismissed. Wharton says: "In a legal point of view all that this case decides is that a Senator of the United States who has been expelled from his seat is not, after such expulsion, subject to impeachment."' ' 66 That the members of either House of Congress should be impeached by, or before, the other, or that an officer whose duties are legislative should be called in question elsewhere for official acts, could never be tolerated, and is repugnant to the nature of the office itself.' 992 Can an officer of the United States be impeached after he is out of office for acts done while he was in office? May he escape impeachment by resigning? May an Officer peachment by Citizen ? The answer to these questions will depend upon the view taken of the purpose and scope of impeachment. One view holds that civil officers only are impeachable for indictable offences only, and that while actually in office. officers of the State. The Senators represent the sovereignty of the several States; they represent the States, and as such are officers of the States and not of the United States. So that a Senator is not impeachable in that he is not an officer of the United States. A Congressman is not impeachable, in that he is not an officer of the United States, but an officer of the people of a State. It leaves it, then, that those cognizable "before this Court are only those who are the government officers of the United States; who are officers alike for every State; who receive their powers alike from every State, directly or indirectly; who are commissioned by the people of all the States, through some person representing the people of all the States. So that the officers of the United States are those included in the Executive department of the Government, and every officer of that Executive department we conceive to be impeachable before this tribunal."-Manager G. A. Jenks in the Belknap case, p. 172; cited by Foster, p. 573. For the opposing view Foster cites "the able argument of Bayard and Harper in Blount's case," Wharton's State Trials, pp. 266-272, 302-314. In the conventions that ratified the Constitution, C. C. Pinckney and Randolph spoke as if a Senator could be impeached.-Elliot's Debates, vol. iv., pp. 263-265; vol. iii., pp. 202, 402. 1 Wharton's State Trials, p. 317, cited by Foster. 'Hon. George F. Hoar, one of the House Managers in the Belknap case. In 1876, May an Officer The other view holds that impeachment may apply even to political offences which cannot be reached by the courts, and may even extend to offences against the peace and welfare of the State committed by private citizens.' This would give a very wide extent to the power of impeachment, and would put a very dangerous weapon in the hands of a dominant party as against a rising leader of the opposition whom the party in power deemed to be dangerous. The best authorities are inclined to accept the view imposing the more restricted scope to this power. Whether an officer can escape impeachment by resigning was discussed at length in the Belknap case. it was found that the Secretary of War, William W. Belknap, had been receiving from $6000 to $12,000 annually from the proceeds peachment by of an Indian post-tradership to which he had appointed the Indian agent. Belknap, as soon as this bribery was discovered, resigned, and the President accepted his resignation. A few hours after his The Belknap resignation, five articles of impeachment were preferred against him, each charging him, in substance, with the acceptance of bribes. Belknap's attorneys entered the plea that at the time of the impeachment he was not an officer of the United States, and therefore the Senate had no jurisdiction. This plea was overruled by a majority of the Senate, but the majority was less than two thirds, thirty-seven to twenty-nine. On the final Escape Im Resigning? Case. "Let us suppose that a citizen, not in office, but possessed of extensive influence arising from popular acts, from wealth or connections, actuated by strong ambition and aspiring to the first place in the Government, should conspire with the disaffected of our own country, or with foreign intriguers, by illegal artifice, corruption, or force, to place himself in the presidential chair. ... What punishment could be better calculated to secure the peace and safety of the State than disqualification? . . . Such offences may be committed as well by persons out of office, and it may be as important to prevent such persons from getting into office as to remove them when in."-Manager Bayard in Blount's case, p. 567 in Foster on the Constitution. |