Impeachment Trial Research Articles

Senator Mitt Romney’s Voting Statement in Trump’s First Impeachment Trial: The Roles of Agonistic Model/Anti-Model Hexads, Progressively Staged Genres, and Enactment in Advocating a Rhetoric of Renewal

ABSTRACT This essay argues that rhetorics of renewal seek to convince auditors to accept guilt for falling away from golden-age values and respond with mortification (not scapegoating) and hope of a promised “second chance.” Three strategic choices can assist: developing a motivationally complete model/anti-model pair, enacting the model’s golden-age values in a way that participates in shared guilt and mortification to demonstrate the feasibility of and path to renewal, and appropriately incorporating and staging forensic, epideictic, and deliberative genres to guide auditors from guilt to renewal. To establish these claims, I analyze the associational clusters in Romney’s impeachment statement through a hexadic lens, then trace those hexads’ development using cluster-agon’s dramatic arc, thus simultaneously demonstrating the benefits of this methodological combination.

대통령 거부권의 헌법적 한계

The presidential veto power to demand reconsideration of a law passed by the National Assembly may be subject to constitutional limits. If such limits exist, debates may arise over their existence, the grounds on which they are based, and the specific nature of these limits. Considering the constitutional position of the president and the form of government, the presidential veto power is constrained by constitutional limits.
 Under the current constitution, the president is a part of the executive branch domestically, adopting a mixed form of government that is primarily presidential but incorporates elements of a parliamentary system. The democratic legitimacy granted to the president as an executive is theoretically equivalent to the democratic legitimacy granted to the legislature, which holds the fundamental legislative power. Even if the president is recognized to have the veto power as a participatory right in the legislative process, such authority cannot infringe upon or exclude the National Assembly’s legislative decision-making power.
 From the perspective of the principle of separation of powers, if the president were granted an unlimited veto power, it could potentially infringe on the judicial power of the Constitutional Court by conferring an abstract normative control authority. The exercise of the president’s veto power should be limited to bills that are clearly unconstitutional, incur substantial costs endangering the soundness of national finances, or are related to the president or his/her family. Beyond constitutional limits, if the presidential veto power is exercised, constitutional sanctions may be necessary through adjudication of power dispute or impeachment trials.

Hedging Pragmatically in Written Political Discourse: A Study of Trump’s Letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives on the Occasion of His Impeachment Trial

The current study attempts to investigate how hedges are employed in written political discourse. Its main aim is to identify the hedging devices used in Trump’s letter to the speaker of the House of Representatives on the occasion of his impeachment trial. The study aims at determining the types, forms and pragmatic functions of the hedges in the letter under study. To achieve the aims of the study, an eclectic model of which is composed of Hyland’s (1996) and (2005) is used in the analysis of data. The most important conclusions of the study are: the most commonly type of hedges used in Trump’s letter is content-oriented hedges, reader pronouns is the most widely used form of hedges, and the most commonly pragmatic function used is seeking the reader's involvement.

Strategic lexicalization in courtroom discourse: A corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis

This paper adopts a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach to explore the pragmatics of lexical categories in courtroom discourse. More specifically, this paper probes the extent to which courtroom interlocutors employ particular lexemes to achieve specific pragmatic purposes, which, in turn, contributes to understanding the way language operates effectively within legal settings. The data used is taken from the testimony of former American President William Clinton during his impeachment trial for the ‘Monica Lewinsky Affair’. The analytical focus is on 17 lexemes representing four lexical categories, namely nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, by highlighting their frequency distribution in the testimony and revealing their significance as conduits for particular pragmatic meanings. Two main findings are revealed in this paper: first, within particular contexts, lexical categories are not only content knowledge units but also pragmatic meaning carriers whose functions go beyond their most commonly-used semantic sense. These pragmatic functions include information confirmation, verification, elicitation, dissociation, uncertainty, and clarification. Second, applying a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach to the study of courtroom discourse contributes to contextualizing the linguistic analysis of the use of language in courtrooms and offers a more functionally based discussion of the pragmatic use of language in legal settings.

Tradition through Repetition: "The Present Crisis," Social Action, and the Literary Excerpt Genre

Abstract: This essay develops a theory of the literary excerpt, taking as a case study the ways in which James Russell Lowell's 1845 poem "The Present Crisis" has been quoted in public discourse by abolitionists, suffragists, temperance activists, anti-imperialists, and Civil Rights activists including W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr. A prominent recent instance is U.S. Senate Chaplain Barry Black's quotation from the poem in his opening prayer for the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Tracing these and other histories of excerpting "The Present Crisis," the essay draws on Rhetorical Genre Studies to argue that the literary excerpt is a distinct paraliterary genre, a form of social action that enables two purposes: bringing literary authority to nonliterary domains and participating in a tradition through repetition. Attention to the excerpt genre's pragmatics can thus bring the question of instrumentality (back) to considerations of literariness.

Fact-checking as a deterrent? A conceptual replication of the influence of fact-checking on the sharing of misinformation by political elites

Abstract In a field experiment conducted during the 2012 general elections in the U.S., Nyhan and Reifler found that the threat of fact-checking deterred state legislators from making false or misleading statements. The current study presents a conceptual replication and extension of this influential study by utilizing a similar treatment that leverages a recent partnership between local media outlets and fact-checking organizations, assessing the effects of the treatment on the accuracy of legislators’ statements on Twitter around the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Results provide limited evidence of the effects of our treatment on the accuracy of legislators’ posts, even among legislators within media markets directly affected by this partnership. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical relevance of these results and avenues for future research.

The madness of misperceptions: evaluating the ways anger contributes to misinformed beliefs

Abstract Drawing from established theoretical traditions in cognitive consistency, motivated reasoning, heuristic–systematic processing, and the anger-activism model, we extend existing work linking anger with misperceptions by specifying three distinct ways anger might contribute to the formation of misperceptions: Increasing reliance on partisan heuristics, influencing political information-seeking behavior, and moderating the influence of partisan media exposure. Analyzing data from an original survey administered nationally via Qualtrics Panels during the first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump in January 2020, results indicate that high-anger partisans were more likely to express belief in claims supportive of their party and critical of the other party, regardless of the veracity of those claims. Further, anger was also linked with greater use of pro-attitudinal information sources and avoidance of counterattitudinal sources, with these differences in partisan media consumption subsequently influencing factual beliefs. However, we found no evidence that anger moderated the relationship between partisan media exposure and factual beliefs. We explore the implications of these findings in a political era defined increasingly by the experience of anger.

Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped

Creating Conspiracy Beliefs: How Our Thoughts Are Shaped

Law’s Tacit Dimension: Audiovisual Proof of Incitement in the Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump

Law’s Tacit Dimension: Audiovisual Proof of Incitement in the Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump

Investigating the Legal Discourse of Bill Clinton’s Impeachment Trial

This paper presents a legal discourse analysis of Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial held in 1998. The paper’s main objective is to explore the different meanings communicated by the dexterous use of some lexical and pragmatic strategies used by discourse interlocutors involved in the trial. More specifically, the article offers a linguistic study of the testimony and statements of President Bill Clinton relating to his impeachment trial. The paper focuses on three main analytical dimensions: word selection, power relations, and questioning and answering, and the way these strategies influence the discourse participants’ conversational performance in the selected trial. To this end, this study draws on a legal discourse analysis approach as discussed by Coulthard (2013) and Mey (2016), focusing on lexicalization, the notion of power, and the use of questions and answers in courtroom settings. The overarching research question is: What are the different ideological and pragmatic meanings targeted beyond the use of selected words during the trial? Results reveal that language is a powerful tool in courtroom testimonies as it helps to extract information, verify evidence, draw legal outcomes, and encode and/or decode the underpinning meanings of courtroom discourse participants. These, in turn, serve to support or defy evidence and ultimately lead to issue a legally just decision.

Cory Pesaturo: A Musician on a Mission

Cory Pesaturo: A Musician on a Mission

Professional Terminology in Danish Minkgate and Inger Støjberg’s Impeachment Trial

Professional Terminology in Danish Minkgate and Inger Støjberg’s Impeachment Trial

'Singular Proceeding' or 'Divided' Judgment? Constitutional Principles and Separation of Powers in the Humphreys and Belknap Impeachment Trials

'Singular Proceeding' or 'Divided' Judgment? Constitutional Principles and Separation of Powers in the Humphreys and Belknap Impeachment Trials

Retirement of Public Official Due to the Expiration of the Term In Impeachment Trial - In Connection with the Analysis of Constitutional Court Decision(2021 Hun-Na 1) -

헌법재판소는 2021. 10. 28. 국회에 의하여 탄핵소추된 법관이 헌법재판소의 탄핵심판 계속 중에 임기만료로 법관직에서 물러난 사건(2021헌나1)에서 국회의 탄핵심판청구가 부적법하다는 각하결정을 하였다. 탄핵심판 계속 중에 피청구인이 퇴직하더라도 탄핵심판절차는 계속된다는 규정이 없는 한, 이런 경우 심판의 이익이 없어졌기 때문에 또는 헌법재판소법 제53조 제2항의 취지에 비추어볼 때 국회의 탄핵심판청구는 부적법하다는 각하의견은 현행 헌법의 탄핵제도에서의 국회의 헌법적 지위 그리고 헌법재판과 일반재판의 차이점을 간과한 채 민사소송의 법리에 따라 소송기술적 판단을 하고 있다는 문제점이 있다고 판단된다. 그리고 명문의 규정이 없음에도 탄핵심판 계속 중에 피청구인이 퇴직하더라도 탄핵심판절차는 계속된다는 것을 전제로 하는 청구인용의견은 탄핵제도가 헌법질서를 수호・유지하기 위한 제도이지만 동시에 국민의 공무담임권을 제한하는 성격의 제도라는 점에서 헌법재판소의 탄핵심판권한은 헌법과 법률에 정해진 요건과 절차에 엄격히 따라야 한다는 법치국가원리적 한계를 간과하고 있다고 판단된다. 국민대표기관으로서 국회의 헌법적 지위와 피청구인의 방어권 보장을 고려할 때 명문의 규정이 없는 한, 국회의 탄핵심판 청구 당시에 청구가 적법하였으나 이후 피청구인 공직자가 임기만료로 퇴직하는 경우에는 더 이상 심판절차를 계속 할 수 없음을 이유로 심판절차종료결정을 하는 것이 타당하다고 판단된다. 근본적으로는 탄핵제도가 가지는 권력통제적 기능과 헌법수호기능을 효율적으로 실현하기 위해서는 이와 같은 경우에도 헌법재판소로 하여금 심리를 계속할 수 있도록 하는 명문의 규정이 두는 것이 필요하다고 판단된다.

Public Approval, Policy Issues, and Partisanship in the American Presidency: Examining the 2019–2020 Trump Impeachment and Acquittal

ABSTRACTAlthough much of the United States undoubtedly was aware of the impeachment hearings and trial for President Donald Trump in 2019–2020, the extent to which information about those events influenced the public remains unknown. Building on scholarship about public opinion and democratic governance, we attempted to fill this knowledge gap through a unique survey. We asked half of our sample to answer three factual questions pertaining to Trump’s first impeachment trial. We ran a quasi-experiment on the other half, trying to influence their view of the trial by informing them of the same three facts that we asked the first group. The quasi-experiment demonstrates that support for acquittal was largely static and that partisanship strongly influences whether the public accepts the veracity and importance of political information. Consequently, civic knowledge today appears to have a limited—perhaps even nonexistent—effect on public attitudes about American politics.

When a lack of passion intertwines with thought and action: Neutral feelings about COVID-19 are associated with U.S. presidential candidate attitudes and voting behavior.

Researchers might assume that neutrality does not shape thought and action because it signals that nothing in the environment needs attention, hence a person has little need to alter their behavior. However, feeling neutral about an issue might be consequential. The COVID-19 pandemic was a major issue during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. We examined whether feeling neutral about COVID-19 was associated with attitudes about the top 2 presidential candidates (Trump vs. Biden) and behavior (i.e., whether a person voted and who they voted for). Data were collected at 2 critical time points: Study 1 was conducted immediately after the U.S. presidential election and Study 2 was conducted prior to the second Senate impeachment trial of Trump. Because feeling neutral about COVID-19 might indicate that a person views the issue as unworthy of attention, a perspective more aligned with Trump's approach, we hypothesized that feeling neutral about COVID-19 would be associated with more pro-Trump attitudes and behaviors. Even after accounting for other affects about COVID-19, in both studies, neutrality was associated with more favorable attitudes toward Trump, less favorable attitudes toward Biden, being less likely to vote, and if a person did vote, being more likely to vote for Trump. In Sudy 2, neutrality was associated with less support for impeaching Trump. Overall, in contrast to the view that neutral affect exerts little influence, neutrality can be critically intertwined with thought and action. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

How Should the State Interact Constitutionally with Corporations which have significant power and influence over its population? Lessons from the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, 1788-1795

How to maintain constitutional accountability over large corporations is an increasing theme in contemporary politics. The impeachment trial of Warren Hastings in 1788-1795 addressed this directly with the behaviour of the East India Trading Company. What lessons for today are illustrated by this historical trial?

Tweeter-in-Chief Donald J. Trump: How Social Media Can Be the Downfall of Your Brand

Abstract Trump’s frustration with mainstream “fake news” media led him to focus his communications on social media and Twitter in particular. An analysis of his tweets shows that they can be interpreted as major stages of the classic “hero’s journey.” At the end of his presidency, Trump refused to return and failed to become a master of the political and his earlier business world. The effect on the Trump brand was devastating. At its height, attaching the Trump brand to a property would add up to 20% over the price of similar properties. By 2018, in contrast, Trump-branded properties and products were selling at up to a 38% discount relative to the market and lost even more ground after the second impeachment trial. A turn for the Trump brand seems unlikely. If it does resurrect itself, it will be buoyed by a very different target market of typical Trump voters.

A Study on the Procedural Issues of Impeachment Trials against Public Officials Retired after Expiring their Term of Office

탄핵심판은 헌법이나 법률을 위반한 공무원을 공직으로부터 배제하여 법적 책임을 추궁하고, 이를 통해 헌법의 규범력을 확보하고 헌법을 보호하는 제도이다. 탄핵심판에 관하여 논의를 할 때에는 이러한 탄핵심판의 본질과 기능을 출발점으로 삼아야 한다. 탄핵소추의결서가 송달된 후에 해당 공무원이 임기만료로 퇴직한 경우 탄핵심판의 이익이 있는지 여부에 대해 논란이 있다. 이런 경우에는 심판의 이익이 없다는 견해도 있다. 그러나 임기만료로 퇴직하였더라도 객관적으로 헌법질서의 수호 및 유지를 위하여 긴요한 사항으로서 그 헌법적 해명이 중대한 의미를 가지고 있다면 심판의 이익을 인정하는 것이 바람직하다. 또한, 임기만료로 퇴직한 공무원을 해당 공직에서 파면할 수 있는지 여부에 대해 논란이 있다. 심판의 이익이 없다고 보는 견해에서는 심판청구를 각하 또는 기각해야 한다는 입장을 취할 수밖에 없다. 그러나 탄핵심판의 본질과 기능, 해당 공무원에게 탄핵사유가 명백히 존재함에도 불구하고 파면하지 않아 다른 공직으로 취임할 기회를 주게 될 경우 공직에 대한 국민의 신뢰, 헌법적 시스템, 궁극적으로는 민주주의가 훼손될 수 있다는 점 등을 감안하면, 임기만료로 퇴직하였더라도 공무원의 신분을 유지하고 있던 때로 소급하여 파면하는 것이 바람직하다.

Divided by the Ballot Box: The Montreal Council of Women and the 1917 Election

Prime Minister Robert Borden created the Wartime Elections Act in September 1917 – a move that granted temporary voting rights to women who had close relatives serving in the military. Their votes were positioned as key to winning the war because it was assumed that newly enfranchised wives and mothers would support Borden’s controversial conscription plans to reinforce their husbands and sons at the front. Suffragists across the country were divided by the act’s limited enfranchisement and its connection to conscription. This turmoil reached its pinnacle in Montreal, a city that was at the centre of nationalistic and ethnic strife caused by the war, and triggered rifts within the city’s largest Anglophone women’s organization, the Montreal Council of Women. One result of this tension was the impeachment trial of the council’s long-time president, Dr Grace Ritchie-England, for her criticism of the Wartime Elections Act and conscription during the 1917 federal election. Calling attention to the resistance of and conflicts between middle-class club women who were normally viewed as hegemonically supportive of the war effort widens our understanding of women’s disparate opinions and activism during the First World War and the fragile nature of suffragists” political unity.