Clinton Impeachment Research Articles

The juridical unconscious: trials and traumas in the twentieth century

Felman, Shoshana. The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. 253pp. $19.95 paperback. The twentieth writes Shoshana Felman at opening of her precisely written and subtly argued book, The juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in Twentieth Century, in effect a century of traumas and (concurrently) a century of theories of (1). It was also a century of trials-indeed, it was a century of of Every decade seemed to bring a new of century, from trial of labor leader Big Bill Haywood of 1907 to Clinton impeachment trial of 1999. In The juridical Unconscious, Felman brings together these two marked characteristics of twentieth examining complex and often-invisible links between traumas and trials. Felman casts a broad and bold argument that could easily have become overwhelming for her and her readers, but she wisely contains and sharpens her argument by choosing to concentrate on two specific of century: 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann and 1995 trial of O.J. Simpson. She argues persuasively that these two trials, though occurring in very different historical, cultural and legal contexts, share a structural similarity that makes them paradigmatic cases for thinking through connections between trials and traumas in twentieth century. Both trials, Felman argues, began as simple processes of litigation and controversies over legal issues, but quickly evolved into veritable theaters of justice (4). The chief characteristic that these two trials share is that both revolve around and move between two separate poles of private trauma and collective trauma (6). The Eichmann trial began as a case that dealt with a collective crime and collective trauma and evolved into a case that opened up a new way of dealing legally with private traumas. The Simpson trial reversed this process, beginning as a case about a private trauma and evolving into a case about collective traumas. By cleverly placing these two much-discussed trials face-to-face with each other, Felman is able to offer a new perspective on each trial and on relationship between trials and traumas more generally. Felman's theoretical framework continues this process of innovative and illuminating pairing of seemingly different thinkers, placing together Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt. Of three, Benjamin is most crucial for Felman's argument. It is his theory of history as trauma and his investigation of process of converting trauma into insight that lie at center of The Juridical Unconscious. Like Benjamin, Felman is concerned with ways in which expression can be given to what Benjamin called the expressionless (das Ausdruckslose). …

Votes, Money, and the Clinton Impeachment. By Irwin L. Morris. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002. Pp. xv, 199. $70.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.)

Previous articleNext article No AccessVotes, Money, and the Clinton Impeachment. By Irwin L. Morris. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002. Pp. xv, 199. $70.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.)Mark J. RozellMark J. RozellThe Catholic University of America Search for more articles by this author The Catholic University of AmericaPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 65, Number 2May 2003 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2508.00652_10 Views: 21Total views on this site Copyright © 2003, Southern Political Science AssociationPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Trust in Government: Lessons from the Clinton Impeachment

The impeachment of Bill Clinton represented a major event in the nation's history. It marked the first time that an elected president was impeached in America's more than two hundred‐year history. The process captivated attention for over one year and its implications will be debated for many decades into the future. This paper discusses the impeachment within the context of broad administrative themes. In addition, the impact of the Clinton impeachment on major institutions is addressed. Tentative conclusions are finally offered in regard to impeachment's impact on trust in government.

The (Un?)Bearable Liteness of E-Mail: Historians, Impeachment and Bush v. Gore

Historians have recently used the Internet to circulate political statements about law. This paper explores the statements they issued against President Clinton's impeachment and President Bush's inauguration. It pays special attention to impeachment, comparing the position taken by historians with that taken by the law professors. While concluding that such statements can be useful, the author advises historians lacking the expertise to evaluate the positions taken in a statement to proceed carefully in signing it. She suggests that historians sign only such documents whose scholarship they have made a preliminary assessment that they could individually defend publicly. She also urges historians to craft statements that give the public a sense of the methods they use in interpreting the past.

The natural: the misunderstood presidency of Bill Clinton

Natural: Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton. By Joe Klein. (New York: Doubleday, 2002. Pp. 230. Prologue, acknowledgments, index. $22.95.) Blinded the Right: Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. By David Brock. (New York: Crown, 2002. Pp. 336. Prologue, epilogue. $25.95.) These books retell previously told tales. But this time, the authors (both journalists but not White House correspondents) claim tell the truth. Natural, Klein reworks much of the material from his novel Primary Colors (1996) into a nonfictional evaluation of Clinton's presidency. He wants clarify misunderstandings about Clinton's record: solid policy and brilliant politics have been obscured the consequences of tawdry personal behavior (p. 21). Brock wants clear his conscience: Blinded the Right rectifies his treatment of troopergate and Anita Hill in American Spectator and his Real Anita Hill (1993). Brock explains, Like a playing with a loaded gun, I didn't appreciate the difference between a substantiated charge and an unsubstantiated (p. 99). He confesses that his epiphany came after receiving a $1 million cash advance write a second attack book, Seduction of Hillary Rodham (1996). When turned up no basis allege criminal wrongdoing or cover-up, was transformed: In finding Hillary Clinton's humanity, I was beginning find my own (p. 261). As a result, Brock wrote two essays for Esquire (Confessions of a Right-Wing Hit Man and The Fire This Time: A Letter the President) which are the basis for this scathing memoir of his disillusionment as a conservative who plotted in the shadows, disregarded the law, and abused win even greater power (p. xi). Brock apologizes, casting himself as the central character in a tawdry tale of money, ambition, and shoddy writing and editorial practices. He says was blinded by a conservative culture of corrosive partisanship, visceral hatreds, and unfathomable hypocrisy (p. xi). He regrets his contribution Clinton's impeachment: Had these conservatives not intervened in the way they did, [Paula] Jones might have sued the Spectator, rather than the president, and though I might have been in the dock, the catastrophic political consequences of her lawsuit might have been avoided (p. 180). Thus, Brock tells an admonitory tale, to illuminate for others the dangers that I see in an empowered conservative movement (p. xii). Klein's tale is updated but not much changed. As one of the first reporters promote Clinton's candidacy (they met in 1989; covered the campaign for Newsweek), became an early booster. He had less contact with Clinton during his presidency, until Clinton granted him an extensive interview after the 2000 Democratic convention. Klein wrote his first take on Clinton's legacy for the New Yorker that autumn. That essay plus several additional interviews provided the basis for Natural. Klein is still amazed at the comeback kid who was a serious, disciplined, responsible (p. 11) president with policy achievements that not inconsiderable and were accomplished against great odds (p. 216). Elsewhere, Klein characterizes Clinton's legacy more modestly, correctly noting that the record shows a mix of successes and failures. He reaches the same assessment as current political science scholarship: instead of one major domestic policy achievement, Clinton's legacy is one of incremental steps toward reform, which Klein aptly calls victories in dribs and drabs (p. 14). Klein suggests an explanation for Clinton's uneven record: he never received credit for the essential coherence of his vision because never found a way articulate it credibly, much less succinctly-no small irony, given his ability communicate (p. 13). This is a thoughtful insight about presidential rhetoric and the failure of Clinton's catchwordsNew Choice, New Covenant, Third Way-to capture the imagination of the public and the press. …

Votes, money, and the Clinton impeachment

Votes, money, and the Clinton impeachment

The American People in Crisis: A Content Analysis

This study examines how images of the American electorate were deployed after the 11 September 2001 terrorism incident and during the Clinton impeachment. Transcripts of congressional proceedings, news coverage, and presidential campaign addresses were analyzed to determine how the phrase the American people was used during these two crises and in unrelated presidential campaign speeches. The analysis considered the roles, actions, qualities, and circumstances ascribed to the people, as well as the time orientation and the forces aligned against the people. The results show that (1) relative to presidential campaign rhetoric, both crises resulted in greater concentration on the electorate; (2) the crises differed from one another as well, with the impeachment texts featuring a contentious electorate and the 11 September texts identifying the people’s psychological strengths and anxieties; and (3) both crises were also affected by exogenous factors—partisanship in the case of impeachment, and the passage of time for the terrorism incident.

Appeal to proportion in the Clinton impeachment trial: Reconciling judgment with disposition

This essay examines the appeal to proportion exemplified in the rhetoric of the Clinton impeachment process, where it emerged in varied forms. As an appeal to judgment, it surfaced sometimes in a strict analogical formulation, or as a bivalent weighting of alternatives, or as an appropriate blending of many and incommensurate elements. Sometimes it referred to the disposition of the case, to the process or deliberation, or to the faculty of judgment. Its polymorphous presence is not accidental, for proportion acts in this discourse at a deep ontological level, linking the disposition of the facts of the case and the disposition of judgment itself.

Democracy Heading South: National Politics in the Shadow of Dixie

In a time when many citizens feel that American politics has changed in disturbing ways, Gus Cochran believes that democracy itself may be heading South. And that, he argues, spells trouble for us all. In this provocative book, Cochran links regional to national politics to show how our political institutions have come to resemble those of the old Solid South. The regional politics of that earlier era, he reminds us, offered little real political choice, was dominated by one-party politics, answered to well-heeled special interests, stoutly resisted federal power, ignored the region's festering racism, and promoted demagoguery and personality over substance and true accountability. For Cochran, the sense of deja vu is overwhelming - and alarming. Deftly balancing history and political critique, Cochran describes the origins and traits of the Solidly Democratic Southern political system from the turn of the century through the 1960s and its transformation in the wake of that turbulent decade. The South, he shows, eventually modernized and became more integrated, even as the New Deal unraveled and the North became more racially polarized. As the regions' shifting fortunes evolved, national politics witnessed a backlash to the civil rights movement (the original engine of political change) that turned the New South into a presidential power broker and spurred a Republican party renaissance nationwide. Cochran maintains that national politics today offers an array of disturbing parallels with old-style Southern politics. He notes that even the controversial Clinton impeachment - in which many of the major actors were Southern - evokes the down-and-dirty politics of old Dixie. Even so, he doesn't push the analogies between South and nation too far. He recognizes significant differences as well as parallels but argues that recent trends toward convergence deserve a close and critical look. In the end, Cochran's warning shot raises critical questions about the future direction of American democracy, while suggesting potential correctives through campaign finance reform, better inducements to voter participation, and more effective means for informing the electorate. Eloquently argued, his book is also a call to action - before American democracy heads South for good.

Aftermath: the Clinton impeachment and the presidency in the age of political spectacle

With the specter of prosecution after his term is over and the possibility of disbarment in Arkansas hanging over President Clinton, the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the events that have followed it show no sign of abating. The question has become what to do, and how to think, about those eight months. Did the President lie or was it plausible that he had truthfully testified to no sexual relationship? Was the job search for Monica just help for a friend or a sinister means of obtaining silence? Even if all the charges were true, did impeachment follow or was censure enough? And what are the lasting repercussions on the office of the Presidency? Aftermath: The Clinton Impeachment and the Presidency in the Age of Political Spectacle takes a multi-disciplinary approach to analyze the Clinton impeachment from political perspectives across the spectrum. The authors attempt to tease out the meanings of the scandal from the vantage point of law, religion, public opinion, and politics, both public and personal. Further, the impeachment itself is situated broadly within the contemporary American liberal state and mined for the contradictory possibilities for reconciliation it reveals in our culture. Contributors: David T. Canon, John Cooper, Drucilla Cornell, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Robert W. Gordon, Lawrence Joseph, Leonard V. Kaplan, David Kennedy, Kenneth R. Mayer, Beverly I. Moran, Father Richard John Neuhaus, David Novak, Linda Denise Oakley, Elizabeth Rapaport, Lawrence Rosen, Eric Rothstein, Aviam Soifer, Lawrence M. Solan, Cass R. Sunstein, Stephen Toulmin, Leon Trakman, Frank Tuerkheimer, Mark V. Tushnet, Andrew D. Weiner, Robin L. West.

"I Knew It All Along" Eventually: The Development of Hindsight Bias in Reaction to the Clinton Impeachment Verdict

Students estimated the chance that President Clinton would be convicted or acquitted in the U.S. Senate impeachment trial, at 4 points in time: (a) 22 days before the verdict (distal pretest), (b) 3 days before the verdict (proximal pretest), (c) 4 days after the verdict (immediate posttest), and (d) 11 days after the verdict (delayed posttest). Within-subjects analyses revealed that both foresight and hindsight changed over time. With respect to foresight, the perceived likelihood of conviction significantly decreased and the perceived likelihood of acquittal significantly increased between the 2 pretests. Content analyses of archived national news reports supported the notion that media predictions about the impending vote produced this temporal shift toward greater prospective accuracy. Confirming hypotheses, hindsight bias emerged for estimates of the prior probability of conviction, but not for estimates of the prior probability of acquittal. Within-subjects analyses revealed that 4 days after the ve...

"I Knew It All Along" Eventually: The Development of Hindsight Bias in Reaction to the Clinton Impeachment Verdict

Students estimated the chance that President Clinton would be convicted or acquitted in the U.S. Senate impeachment trial, at 4 points in time: (a) 22 days before the verdict (distal pretest), (b) 3 days before the verdict (proximal pretest), (c) 4 days after the verdict (immediate posttest), and (d) 11 days after the verdict (delayed posttest). Within-subjects analyses revealed that both foresight and hindsight changed over time. With respect to foresight, the perceived likelihood of conviction significantly decreased and the perceived likelihood of acquittal significantly increased between the 2 pretests. Content analyses of archived national news reports supported the notion that media predictions about the impending vote produced this temporal shift toward greater prospective accuracy. Confirming hypotheses, hindsight bias emerged for estimates of the prior probability of conviction, but not for estimates of the prior probability of acquittal. Within-subjects analyses revealed that 4 days after the verdict, participants accurately recalled that their prospective estimates of the likelihood of conviction had shifted toward greater accuracy over time; but 1 week later, they incorrectly believed that they had been more certain all along that Clinton would not be convicted. This article suggests that the potential losses associated with conviction were more salient than the potential gains associated with acquittal, and speculates that cognitive assimilation of the past did not occur until people had forgotten their earlier beliefs. These findings are important because they demonstrate that whether or not hindsight bias emerges depends not only on how long after the event people make retrospective judgments, but also how long before the event people focus these retrospective judgments. Supporting a self-serving interpretation, hindsight bias held for one's own estimates, but not for one's beliefs about the estimates of the average American or one's best friend. Consistent with Hawkins and Hastie's (1990) conclusions, a hybrid of cognitive and motivational accounts thus best explains the results.

Impeachment, Attainder, and a True Constitutional Crisis: Lessons from the Strafford Trial

In the months that preceded President Clinton's impeachment trial, observers in the media breathlessly reported the so-called death struggle between the President and Kenneth Starr. Distinguished academic commentators, such as Ronald Dworkin and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., were equally overheated in their rhetoric, predicting that the President's impeachment would shred the American constitutional fabric. Of course, Clinton was impeached, with no discernible unraveling of the regime. The immediate political stakes were high, to be sure, and both sides fought with energy - as a minor participant in the struggle, I can attest to that. But no lives, and very few persons' liberty, were ever in jeopardy and, contra Dworkin and Schlesinger, the U.S. Constitution was safe throughout the ordeal. The impeachment trial of a sitting president is always a crisis, at least in the sense that it may herald a transfer of power. But in that sense every presidential election could equally be called a crisis. There are crises, and then there are constitutional crises. For an illustration of the latter, let us retreat to the 1641 impeachment trial of King Charles I's principal advisor, Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford. At stake in Strafford's trial was nothing less than the future of English constitutionalism and limited monarchy: Would the Stuart kings enlarge the powers of the monarchy along French lines or would Parliament preserve, and even expand, its own powers and privileges? And, on a more personal level, whose head would fall - Strafford's or that of his principal antagonist in the House of Commons, John Pym? It was the stuff of riveting drama: The King attended every day of the month-long trial, crowds gathered each day to witness Strafford's arrival in Westminster, and the city erupted in violence. Contrast this with the waning interest in the Lewinsky affair by the time of the Clinton impeachment trial in the United States Senate. One of the first lessons from history is that not every political crisis raises fundamental issues. I think it fair to conclude or simply posit that a constitutional crisis may be expected to excite widespread interest outside the academy. If this is accurate, an impeachment trial that sets off an avalanche of law review articles, but garners fewer than ten million television viewers, is not a constitutional crisis.

Tragedy and Farce in Roth's: The Human Stain

Philip Roth has called his recent three novels “a thematic trilogy.” They all deal, he explains, with the “historical moments in postwar American life that have had the greatest impact on my generation”: the McCarthy era, the Vietnam War, and 1998, the year of Bill Clinton's impeachment (McGrath, “Interview” 8).1 In American Pastoral (1997), a handsome, honest, hardworking businessman and Jewish athletic hero, Seymour (“Swede”) Levov, is ruined by the actions of daughter Merry, an anti-Vietnam War activist, who “brings the war home” to folks in New Jersey by setting off a bomb in the local post office.

"Sex, Lies, and Videotape": Attitudes toward the Clinton Impeachment

"Sex, Lies, and Videotape": Attitudes toward the Clinton Impeachment

In the interests of justice: reforming the legal profession

Two thousand years ago, Seneca described advocates not as seekers of truth but as accessories to injustice, smothered by their prosperity. This unflattering assessment has only worsened over time. The vast majority of Americans now perceive lawyers as arrogant, unaffordable hired guns whose ethical practices rank just slightly above those of used car salesmen. In this penetrating new book, Deborah L. Rhode goes beyond the commonplace attacks on lawyers to provide the first systematic study of the structural problems confronting the legal profession. A past president of the Association of American Law Schools and senior counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Clinton's impeachment proceedings, Rhode brings an insider's knowledge to the labyrinthine complexities of how the law works, or fails to work, for most Americans and often for lawyers themselves. She sheds much light on problems with the adversary system, the commercialization of practice, bar disciplinary processes, race and gender bias, and legal education. She argues convincingly that the bar's current self-regulation must be replaced by oversight structures that would put the public's interests above those of the profession. She insists that legal education become more flexible, by offering less expensive degree programs that would prepare paralegals to provide much needed low cost assistance. Most important, she calls for a return to ethical standards that put public service above economic self-interest. Elegantly written and touching on such high profile cases as the O.J. Simpson trial and the Starr investigation, In the Interests of Justice uncovers fundamental flaws in our legal system and proposes sweeping reforms.

The Semiosis of the Clinton Impeachment Debate

The attempt in 1998-99 to remove William Jefferson Clinton from the office of the presidency of the United States through the impeachment process was justified on the grounds of the immorality of the actions which he was accused of taking. During the long public debate over this matter, there was a substantial disconnect between the dominant view that Clinton was understood as a person of dubious morality and the dominant view that Clinton ought not be removed from office. At the same time, those who led the attempt to remove him from office were charged with engaging in a naked grab for power behind the facade of a hypocritical rhetoric of morality. These phenomena can be explained by the fact that all of the major themes in this long discourse sounded in one or another of the ancient myths of kingship. In turn, these myths each rest on one or another of the deep cosmologies to which humans appeal in order to create the cognitive World that is the milieu of the conscious human. Thus, the discourse rested on deeply principled foundations. And, as a political matter, Clinton was not removed from office because a substantial majority of the populace held one or another concept of kingship for which the morality of the incumbent is irrelevant.

Wading Knee Deep in Words, Words, Words": Senatorial Rhetoric in the Johnson and Clinton Impeachment Trials

In the only two presidential impeachment trials in American history, 30 senators of the 40th Congress and 88 senators of the 106th Congress provided statements about their respective decisions. We use computer-assisted stylistic analysis and a close reading of the texts to analyze the accounts they offered in these statements. We address three main issues. First, did the senators of the Johnson and Clinton trials, separated by 131 years, explain themselves in more or less the same way or are there basic differences between the two proceedings in what they said and how they said it? Second, can we trace differences in the style, tone, and substance of senators' rhetoric to their positions, pro or con, on impeachment? And third, what do the form and substance of senators' statements tell us about their motives for speaking? This trial has developed, in the most remarkable manner, the insane love of speaking among public men.... [W]e have been wading knee deep in words, words, words...and are but little more than half across the turbid stream. I verily believe there are fierce impeachers here, who, if the alternative of conviction of the President coupled with their silence, and an unlimited opportunity to talk, coupled with his certain acquittal, were before them would instantly decide to speak. James A. Garfield (R-OH) describing the plodding pace of Senate proceedings during the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson (quoted by Benedict 1999, 124).

Scholars and Public Debates: A Reply to Devins and Farnsworth

In the wake of President Clinton's impeachment, a curious controversy has broken out over the proper role of legal scholars in public debates. Neal Devins, Ward Farnsworth and others have argued that letters submitted by law professors to Congress opposing Clinton's impeachment were ill-advised efforts to trade on the impression of scholarly expertise in an area in which most of them had none. In this short article, I reply to the criticisms advanced by Devins and Farnsworth. My basic line of response is that they make a fundamental error in their analysis of what these letters are about. The Clinton impeachment letter did not base its claim to attention on an aggressive presumption of expertise, but by clearly exhibiting the ability of constitutional scholars to create and evaluate constitutional arguments. In Part I, I describe the circumstances that led to the writing of the Clinton impeachment letter and defend it on the basis of a standard of expertise that rests on the ability of scholars to create and evaluate constitutional arguments. I also diagnose the error made by Devins and Farnsworth - they assume they can criticize the expertise on which the letter was based without dealing with the letter's arguments. In Part II, I take up the theories of expertise advanced by Devins and Farnsworth in detail to show how their critiques went wrong. With respect to Devins, I emphasize that he ignores how legal scholars search for the truth through a clash of arguments. Devins's article is also marred by insinuations about the political motivations of those who signed the Clinton letter that are beyond the kind of fair comment that should appear in legal journals. Farnsworth offers a more careful argument, but he is no more successful than Devins in undermining the letter. Specifically, Farnsworth does not understand how public debates work. He offers a convention to govern the signing of such letters that is not necessary given the scrutiny such messages inevitably receive. I deepen my response to Farnsworth in Part III by setting out the circumstances that surrounded the creation of a statement (which I authored) to the Florida legislature, opposing their effort to designate presidential electors in the aftermath of the 2000 Election.

Shylock in Washington: the Clinton crisis, The Merchant of Venice , and enjoyment of the law

Drawing on the writings of Lacan and i — ek, John Nickel explores the dynamics between enjoyment and the law in two salacious dramas, one in Washington and one in Shakespeare's Venice. Key players in the Clinton impeachment scandal and The Merchant of Venice , Nickel argues, deviate from the normative experience of finding obscene enjoyment in what the law prohibits. Congressional Republicans and Shylock interpret the public law too literally, contrary to clandestine rules of behaviour, which condone certain transgressions that give obscene enjoyment. Their aggressive use of the explicit law, moreover, reveals the secret code of behaviour, inhibiting its ability to provide obscene enjoyment. Those on the Right in Congress and the Jewish money lender also subvert the existing social structure by subjugating the law, in full public view, to their effort to recover stolen enjoyment. In their eyes, Clinton and Venetian Christians, respectively, robbed them of the enjoyment they deem critical to their happiness and way of life. Furthermore, in the Senate trial and in the Venetian Court of Justice, the Republicans and Shylock relish the legal process itself, using the proceedings to mortify their opponents. Hardly noble themselves, Clinton, Congressional Democrats and Venetian Christians cynically manipulate the law to hide their obscene enjoyment. Through legalisms and masquerades of a trial, they follow the unwritten code that the law ultimately serves to protect the interests of those in power. Nevertheless, since their satisfaction remains veiled and they appear to be controlling the exposed enjoyment of their antagonists, they act as the true representatives of the law.