Presidential Impeachment Research Articles

The Paradigm of the General Principles of Good Governance as Examination Method of Indonesian Presidential Impeachment based on the Perspective of Ethical Control

This study aims to reveal the paradigm of General Principles of Good Governance as a method of examination for Indonesian presidential impeachment based on the perspective of ethical control. This study employed the method of legal research. It was carried out to reveal principles and basis of (dogmatic or doctrinal) philosophy of positive law. In addition, the study is legal discovery in-concreto that is feasible to be applied to resolve a certain legal case. This study exposes that one of the legal reasons for the termination of the President of Indonesia is despicable deeds. It is determined as an act of President that degrade human characters. Hermeneutically, the meaning of “despicable deeds” may cover criminal acts and ethical actions. Therefore, the meaning of “despicable deeds” in this study is limited into acts of ethics infringement related to the General Principles of The Good Governance. The President can be terminated from the office when there is a violation to the General Principles of the Good Governance since the principles are the ethical principles of government. The principles contain honesty, accuracy, purity, balance, and legal certainty. These principles are the items that bring solution and reference for the House of Representatives (DPR) and the People’s Consultative Assembly (MPR) and the Constitutional Court. Theoretically, there is no norm, either of the 1945 Constitution or of other regulations, which limit the interpretation of “despicable acts” as a reflection of the acts of the President to be classified into ethical conducts. Therefore, the application of the General Principles of Good Governance as method of examination for the presidential impeachment is a new paradigm from the perspective of ethical control in Indonesia.

The President's Two Bodies

The President has “two bodies.” One body is personal, temporary, and singular. The other is impersonal, continuous, and composite. American public law reveals different perspectives on how to manage—but cannot escape—this central paradox. Our major disagreements and confusions about presidential power track what we might think of as the fault lines between these two bodies. An array of seemingly disparate debates on topics ranging from presidential impeachment, to the ownership of presidential papers, to the availability of executive privilege, to a presidential duty to defend statutes in court, to the legal status of presidential tweets, to the role of the White House counsel, to the nature of presidential intent, to the legal remedies available for presidential misconduct reflect this longstanding, ongoing ambivalence about the nature of the presidential office. The goal of this article is to make the President’s two bodies central to American public law. Recognizing the two bodies provides analytical coherence to the structure of presidential power. It illuminates both our contestations over, and the constituted reality of the constitutional presidency. The President’s duality brings into view traces of a personal, charismatic authority simultaneously in deep tension with and fundamentally constitutive of the institutional presidency. It reconstructs seemingly far-flung aspects of American public law (ranging in form from Founding-era debates, to judicial decisions, to statutory enactments, to presidential norms) as a shared effort to negotiate the President’s two bodies. And it illuminates what is at stake—for presidential legitimacy, for governmental capacity, for checks and balances, and for our substantive constitutional commitments—in how public law handles this defining ambiguity. Ultimately, the legal lines connecting the two bodies cannot emerge from the duality itself. Rather, it is a normative project of public law to construct them—and to do so in furtherance of articulated substantive commitments. Even as the two-bodies prism reveals a crucial role for public law in constituting the office of the President, it shows as well the limits of law and legal methods in managing its central tension. Presidential charisma is both inseparable from American constitutionalism and itself governed—incompletely and provisionally—by choices that lawyers and jurists make about how to construct the President’s duality.

Is Presidential Impeachment Like a Coup?

It is not uncommon for supporters of a president threatened with impeachment to denounce the proceedings as a kind of coup. There are obvious differences between an impeachment conducted in accord with the terms of a constitution and a lawless military coup, and yet such rhetoric might raise a real claim that the congressional impeachment power, at least relative to an elected president, has fallen into a kind of obsolescence and can no longer be legitimately used. Presidential impeachments might have fallen into the same status of formal availability but practical illegitimacy as other such constitutional features of indirect democracy as the power of presidential electors to choose a president. Moreover, there might well be some particular circumstances in which critics are justified in charging that Congress is attempting to overturn the election results through the abuse of the impeachment power. But consideration of the distinctive features of the constitutional impeachment power should reassure us that in most circumstances the use of the constitutional power to remove a president by congressional action would not be comparable to a coup.

Measuring the Brazilian ethanol and gasoline market efficiency using DFA-Hurst and fractal dimension

The ethanol and petroleum represent important energy commodities. Brazil is one of the world's largest producers of ethanol and became one of the ten largest global oil explorers in 2018. This paper proposes the Detrended Fluctuation Analysis (DFA), Hurst exponent (H) and fractal dimension (D) to investigate the dynamic behavior of ethanol and gasoline prices series in Brazil. Furthermore, a new market efficiency measure, namely the Efficiency Index (EI), is also proposed. Some on-going change toward a more efficient market in the follow-up of an institutional political change is analyzed. The data series are obtained from the National Agency of Petroleum and the Natural Gas and Biofuels (ANP). Weekly spot prices are used for time windows covering two periods. The first period (P1) precedes the Brazilian presidential impeachment occurred in 2016 and includes data from January/2011 to December/2015. The second (P2) addresses the period from July/2016 to July/2018, covering the post-impeachment scenario, with new government policies in the energy sector. The results indicate a subtle path toward market efficiency for the ethanol and a clear moving toward better efficiency for the gasoline market after changes in the fuel policy of Brazil. Moreover, the H and D indices prove to be useful tools for tackling the price dynamics of the fuel market, and to build the new measure EI.

How Citizens Reshaped the Path of Presidential Impeachment in Korea

This study aims to explain what facilitates presidential impeachment in Korea. More specifically, it compares the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye with the case of former president Roh Moo-hyun, and examines how citizens reshaped the power relationship between the ruling and opposition parties, and, finally, led to the impeachment of the president. This study claims that presidential impeachment is a political punishment of citizens and that a legislative shield or a judiciary shield is not sufficient to protect presidents from impeachment when most citizens turn their backs against the incumbent president. Generating strong and widespread public support or resistance is the most critical determinant of the success or failure of an attempt to impeach a president, especially in those new democracies where party systems are less stable and political parties are less cohesive.

Narrative (Re)framing by Translating and Quoting Foreign Media: Presidential Impeachment News in South Korea

Narrative (Re)framing by Translating and Quoting Foreign Media: Presidential Impeachment News in South Korea

The cost of presidential impeachment to politically connected firms

AbstractThis study examines the ways political events can affect the stock prices of politically connected firms by studying one of the biggest corruption scandals in modern South Korean history, which led to the first-ever impeachment of a sitting president. We analyzed the stock returns of firms that donated money to foundations allegedly controlled by the president's confidante. We found that the abnormal stock returns of politically connected firms decreased when the president was removed from office. Using tick-by-tick stock price data, we were able to pinpoint the exact moments when the stock prices of firms that donated money fluctuated, as the president's fate was determined by the justices of the Constitutional Court.

Designing Presidential Impeachment

Impeachment is again a central preoccupation of United States constitutional law and politics. This article casts new light on this debate by examining the law and practice of presidential impeachment globally. It draws first on case studies from countries such as South Korea, Paraguay, Brazil, and South Africa, and then large-n empirical analysis of constitutional texts. Contrary to current American practice, it shows, impeachment is not primarily about removing criminals or similar “bad actors” from the presidency. Instead, it is a tool to exit deep political crises. At its best, impeachment enables a ‘hard reset’ of the political system by triggering new elections. This systemic, rather than individualistic, conceptualization of impeachment is normatively desirable. It ameliorates the rigidity that sometimes characterizes presidential systems, and as we show has no negative impact on the quality of democracy. This comparative analysis has significant implications for the design and practice of impeachment, especially in the United States. In particular, it supports a broader, more political gloss on the famously cryptic phrase “high crimes and misdemeanors.” It also implies that impeachment standards should vary for different kinds of actors such as presidents, judges, and cabinet members, rather than being uniform. Finally it shows how impeachment’s integrity, contra current case-law, can be materially aided by judicial involvement.

Teaching about Impeachment in Law School: What Changes to Make after the Mueller Report?

This short essay discusses my motivation for and the process that I went through over the past two years developing a law school course on presidential impeachment and related topics. I recommend that those law school faculty members who may have only a modest constitutional law background, but who feel as I do that more sustained discussion of the questions that would be presented by an attempt to remove President Trump from office through impeachment is called for, consider also developing and offering such a course. I found that through reading a few accessible books and supervising a handful of student individual research papers, one can fairly quickly develop sufficient command of the material to offer a valuable elective course on presidential impeachment and other non-electoral presidential removal procedures. But the proper scope of coverage of such a class in the current environment is a rapidly moving target, and the course that I will teach this fall semester will have to be substantially restructured from my prior spring semester offering to reflect the damning findings of the Mueller Report, the Trump Administration’s mischaracterization of that Report and subsequent stonewalling response to congressional oversight and testimony requests, the damning whistleblower complaint and revealed Administration cover-up efforts and subsequent near-universal embrace of impeachment by House Democrats, and the implications of the continued and ever more fervent and cult-like partisan embrace of President Trump by Senate Republicans even after the Mueller Report and the whistleblower complaint.

Developing a Law School Course on Presidential Impeachment

This short essay discusses my motivation for and the process that I went through over the past two years developing a law school course on Presidential Impeachment and related topics. I recommend that those law school faculty members who may have only a modest constitutional law background, but who feel as I do that more sustained discussion of the questions that would be presented by an attempt to remove President Trump from office through impeachment are called for, consider also developing and offering such a course. I found that through reading a few accessible books and supervising a handful of student individual research papers one can fairly quickly develop sufficient command of the material to offer a valuable elective course on Presidential Impeachment and other non-electoral Presidential removal procedures. But the proper scope of coverage of such a class in the current environment is a rapidly moving target, and the course that I will teach this fall semester will have to be substantially restructured from my prior spring semester offering to reflect the damning findings of the Mueller Report, and the Trump Administration’s mischaracterization of that Report and subsequent stonewalling response to Congressional oversight and testimony requests, and the implications of the continued and ever more fervent and cult-like partisan embrace of President Trump by Senate Republicans even after the Report’s issuance.

Claims of Misrepresentation: A Comparison of Germany and Brazil

The system of representative democracy is under considerable strain. Its institutions are struggling to maintain legitimacy, and its elected representatives are failing to keep their monopoly on (formal) political representation. An emerging multitude of (new) claim makers contests the authority of elected representatives as well as the functioning of the existing system of representative democracy by alleging misrepresentation. In this article, we identify a significant shortcoming in Saward’s claims-making approach; specifically, we argue that it offers little direction in addressing misrepresentation. We distinguish between claims of representation and claims of misrepresentation, and show how the latter can fulfill one, two or all three of the following functions: (1) they appeal to an enemy/antagonist (strategy), (2) identify causes of misrepresentation related to policies, politics, and polity (persuasion), and (3) claim to create a new linkage to “the people”, sometimes present themselves as new representatives (reframing). To test this proposed framework, we compare claims of misrepresentation in Brazil made by civil society groups (before and during the presidential impeachment between 2014 and 2016) and in Germany (focusing on the parliamentarians of the Alternative for Germany during the first six months of mandate). Our results suggest that claims of misrepresentation are not intrinsically democratic or undemocratic, but are instead ambiguous, have different manifestations and disparate impacts on the representative system. Our article contributes to the conceptual development of the claims approach and to further understanding several critical and current challenges to representative democracy.

English in advertising in Brazil

AbstractYears ago, I conducted a study of English in advertising in Brazil (Friedrich, 2002) and wrote about the possible sociolinguistic motivations for such practice. At the time, I was able to confirm that there was a significant presence of English in names of shops and other brands, that many advertisements contained text in English (especially in the secondary text). Brazilians also used English creatively, adapting the language to local needs and modifying words (through suffixation, clipping, and so on) to make them more local (Diniz de Figueiredo, 2010). In the fifteen plus years since that study, much has happened in Brazil, including a presidential impeachment and extensive investigations into corruption. Urban violence remains a great challenge. The country has in some regards embraced being more globalized, and in others has become prouder and more aware of its own cultural manifestations. At the same time, great strides have been made in technological development and other areas of knowledge and action. In this article, I look back at the findings of the original 2002 investigation and discuss—in light of the five possible, original theoretical explanations for the use of English in advertising synthesized there—what may have changed and what remains the same in this realm of language use. I further examine literature in related areas and what insights in relation to world Englishes can be drawn from this context.

Candlelight demonstrations and the presidential impeachment in South Korea

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the short-term and long-term causes of the candlelight demonstrations and the ensuing presidential impeachment in South Korea, as well as the characteristics of the organization that planned the candlelight demonstrations and the participants of them. Design/methodology/approach The research is based on the previous literature, news articles, as well as various surveys on the randomly selected participants of the demonstrations and on a representative sample of Korean electorate, including non-participants as well. Findings The candlelight demonstrations, although “triggered” by a news report, would not have occurred, without angers and discontents accumulated over the president’s whole term by the irregularities and wrongdoings of the administration. The system of checks and balances in democratic system did not work properly. In that regard, the candlelight demonstrations and the ensuing presidential impeachment were just an unanticipated expression of the problems and defects built in the Korean democratic system of 1987, which would have found a way out in any form eventually. Originality/value Based on the analysis of the candlelight demonstrations and the ensuing presidential impeachment, the paper suggests instructive implications on a new democracy as well as on modern representative democracies that are in jeopardy now.

An Essay on Grounds for Presidential Impeachment - Case Study on Impeachment against President Park Geun-Hye

An Essay on Grounds for Presidential Impeachment - Case Study on Impeachment against President Park Geun-Hye

Role of Social Media and Emotion in South Korea’s Presidential Impeachment Protests

Previous studies have shown that social media is effective in large-scale mobilization, facilitating leaderless and more flexible forms of resistance. However, some scholars argue that this type of mobilization suffers from a lack of organizational form and collective identity. This paper shows that social media-centered networks can in fact promote collective actions powerful enough to challenge a corrupt president. We also prove the role of emotions in collective actions. Using an empirical analysis of the 2016 Presidential Impeachment Protests surrounding “Choi Soon-sil Gate,” we first demonstrate the effects of social media activities on participation in collective actions. Next, we explore the effects of anger on social media activities and participation. In short, this study reveals a new angle on social media’s influence in mobilizing collective actions by analyzing the effect of emotions on participation. In this process, social media activities are escalated by emotional outbreaks, and participation then increases throughout a given collective action.

Public Reason and Public Sphere in Korean Democracy An Analysis of Citizens' Competing Rallies and the Constitutional Court's Decision on the Presidential Impeachment

This paper attempts to explore practical and theoretical implications of the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye in conjunction with Korean democracy from a perspective of political philosophy by employing the ideas of Rawls'' public reason and Habermas'' public sphere. It examines how public reason or public use of reason works to form an overlapping consensus in the process of the citizens'' competing rallies of Candlelight vs. Taegeukgi leading to the Constitutional Court''s decision, from October 2016 to March 2017. The paper, with the analyses of the Candlelight vs. Taegeukgi rallies, the decision on the motion to impeach the president in National Assembly, and the Constitutional Court''s final jurisdiction on the impeachment, attempts to argue that public reason or public use of reason tacitly or explicitly was, albeit sporadically, expressed in the public sphere so that it drove public institutions to make a decision from a perspective of public reasonableness. However, advancing differently in parallel public reasons or public uses of reason in the Korean public sphere exposes some practical limitations of communicative action or deliberative politics in its capacity to form a social consensus or solidarity particularly when citizens are divided in political ideologies. It may also arguably reflect a distinctive aspect of Korean political culture. For this reason, it further argues that the Korean constitutional court''s decision for the impeachment, though equipped with the procedural legitimacy and contributed to maintaining stability of Korean democracy, reflects an overlapping consensus as a modus vivendi in the sense that it is open to further public reflection in the future.

Elections in times of neo-coupism and populism: A short essay on Brazil's right-wing presidential candidates' plans for governance and their proposals for gender and Afro-Brazilians

In October 2018, Brazil held general elections in which new senators, federal representatives, state representatives, governors, and the new president of the republic were chosen. The singularity of the context surrounding the elections is evident: the call occurred two years after a presidential impeachment linked to a state coup which consolidated the ascent of populist forces from the right and which initiated a series of regressions in social rights, criminalization of progressive activism, and increase of police violence. As a result, in the presidential elections, populist candidates and discourses of hate became popular, targeting historically marginalized social groups within the country (women, African-Brazilians, LGBTQIs – Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Queers, Intersex – working class, rural communities, and the indigenous populations). This essay examines the presidential proposals or positions towards the aforementioned groups, paying particular attention to speeches of right-populist candidates, especially those made by Jair Bolsonaro, chosen in a runoff election.

Korean Constitutional Court and Constitutionalism in Political Dynamics: Focusing on Presidential Impeachment

The Constitutional Court of Korea, which should be a product of the June Democracy Movement in 1987, has transformed Korea's constitutionalism ever since its inception. The recent two impeachment cases decided respectively in 2004 against President Roh and in 2017 against President Park might be classic examples of how the state institutions including the Court interact with other institutions in a very political case in terms of political dynamics. In the impeachment case against President Roh, the Court positioned itself strategically by establishing the 'grave violation of law’ rationale, where it sided with the impeaching parliament by finding three counts of violations of law but dismissed the case in its entirety through the operation of the 'grave violation of law'. In the impeachment case against President Park, the Court basically followed the grave violation logic but reached a different conclusion to remove the President, which might be another strategic position taken by the Court, which is in line with the will of the super-majority of the Korean public. This paper aims to discuss how the Constitutional Court has developed its strategic position in terms of political dynamics, by analyzing the two presidential impeachment cases.

Presidential Impeachment: A Contemporary Analysis

Talk about impeaching President Donald Trump increases as the Democratic Party reclaims control of the House of representatives following the 2018 mid-term elections. The very next day Americans awake to learn of these developments and just hours later that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been fired, “replacing him with a loyalist who has echoed the president’s complaints about the special counsel investigation into Russia’s election interference and will now take charge of the inquiry.” As a Constitutional crisis looms large over the Trump Presidency, now is a good time to examine the history and role of impeachment in our constitutional system, how it works, and likely implication given what is now known about the Trump presidency. This Article proceeds in nine parts. First, is an examination of the Constitutional provision for impeachment. Second, is a look at the history of U.S. presidential impeachment proceedings in general. Third, a discussion about the impeachment proceedings of President Andrew Johnson is presented. Fourth, the unique situation in more recent history of Vice President Spiro Agnew is discussed. Fifth, President Richard Nixon and the impact of Watergate is offered. Sixth, the impact of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment is examined. Seventh, is a look at the mechanics of impeachment in a contemporary setting. Eighth, given facts now known, I look at the potential for President Donald Trump’s impeachment and removal, including arguments for nine currently identifiable impeachable offenses. And last, I conclude. I believe this Article comes at an important crossroads for the American democracy. The issues addressed here are timely and of profound importance to the United States, global community, and to the future of civilization. Seldom can these claims be made of a law review article.

Interview with Aníbal Pérez-Liñán (University of Notre Dame)

Anibal Perez-Linan is Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on democratization, the rule of law, political stability, and institutional performance among new democracies. He is currently researching the political conditions that preclude judicial independence in developing countries and the consequences of political radicalization for democratic survival. His publications include Presidential Impeachment and the New Political Instability in Latin America (2007); and, with Scott Mainwaring, the award-winning Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall (2013). He is Editor-in-chief of the Latin American Research Review, the scholarly journal of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), and co-editor with Kellogg Institute Director, Paolo Carozza, of the Kellogg Series on Democracy and Development at the University of Notre Dame Press. This interview is divided into three main sections. The first section addresses current research and the challenges to judicial politics field of study. The second section targets Brazilian and Latin American politics focusing on the potential inter-branch crisis. Moreover, the last section summarizes practical suggestions for Brazilian researchers that want to publish in international journals, besides some inspiring reflections about the future of academic research in a global and tech-based society.