Speech: The Constitution, Impeachment, and the Trump Presidency

Abstract

Our Eighteenth Century Constitution was supposed to operate without political parties, but today we have a very strong two-party political system and a Nation that is polarized along partisan political lines. Everything that happens with respect to the current impeachment proceedings against President Trump reflects the interaction between our eighteenth century Constitution and the two-party political system. Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that all questions relating to impeachment constitute a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment to the Congress, so that the courts are not involved in the impeachment process in any way whatsoever. In this speech, I will briefly review the two-party political system and the enormous powers of the American President. I will then explain the constitutional process of impeachment and the respective roles of the House of Representatives and the Senate in that process. I will follow that with a review of the Johnson, Clinton and Nixon impeachments and discuss the operation of partisan politics in those impeachments. I will conclude with a discussion of the current impeachment proceedings involving President Trump.