General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsCan a sitting Supreme Court Judge be impeached?
Has that ever happened?
unblock
(52,227 posts)Raster
(20,998 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)KPN
(15,645 posts)President who has been illegitimately elected?
samnsara
(17,622 posts)saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)because, ah shucks, you do the research sweet pea.
denbot
(9,899 posts)I catch snippets of news when I can.. I wont have me time for another 5-6 hours..
A friend wrote a book on this I attended a CLE event where the author of this article spoke https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2017/10/15/the-founding-fathers-designed-impeachment-for-someone-exactly-like-donald-trump/?utm_term=.cbe589333ea9
The very embodiment of what the Founding Fathers feared is now residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Again and again, they anticipated attributes and behaviors that President Trump exhibits on an all-too-regular basis. By describing High Crimes and Misdemeanors, the grounds for impeachment, as any act that poses a significant threat to society either through incompetence or other misdeeds the framers made it clear that an official does not have to commit a crime to be subject to impeachment. Instead, they made impeachment a political process, understanding that the true threat to the republic was not criminality but unfitness, that a president who violated the countrys norms and values was as much a threat as one who broke its laws.
Gouverneur Morris, who wrote the Constitutions preamble, and future president James Madison were worried about a leader who would pervert his administration into a scheme of peculation theft of public funds or oppression. He might betray his trust to foreign powers, as Madison put it. Morris, who like many in the colonies believed King Charles had taken bribes from Louis XIV to support Frances war against the Dutch, declared that without impeachment we expose ourselves to the danger of seeing the first Magistrate [the President] in foreign pay without being able to guard against it by displacing him.
I also purchased a copy of her book on impeachment https://www.mhpbooks.com/books/a-citizens-guide-to-impeachment/ This is the key quote from the book
Impeachment is based upon those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. Alexander Hamilton
I got an hour of CLE for listening to a great litigator talk about the legal issues on impeachment. This was a fun day
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)marylandblue
(12,344 posts)He was acquitted in the Senate. The charges were that he was politically biased in making decisions, which would not be considered grounds today.
Justice Abe Fortas was almost impeached in 1969 for corruption, but he resigned first
angrychair
(8,699 posts)There is no special protections for a Justice, they can be indicted and arrested like anyone else if they committed a crime.