indictable crimes.
"If there is one point established by … Anglo-American impeachment practice, it is that the phrase 'high Crimes and Misdemeanors' is not limited to indictable crimes."[1] As recounted above, impeachment was conceived in Parliament as a method for controlling abusive royal ministers. Consistent with that purpose, it was not confined to accusations of criminal wrongdoing. Instead, it was applied to "many offenses, not easily definable by law," such as abuse of power, betrayal of national security, corruption, neglect of duty, and violating Parliament's constitutional prerogatives.[2] Many officials were impeached for non-criminal wrongs against the British system of government; notable examples include the Duke of Buckingham (1626), the Earl of Strafford (1640), the Lord Mayor of London (1642), the Earl of Orford and others (1701), and Governor General Warren Hastings (1787).[3] Across centuries of use, the phrase "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" thus assumed a "special historical meaning different from the ordinary meaning of the terms 'crimes' and 'misdemeanors.'"[4] It became a term of art confined to impeachments, without "relation to whether an indictment would lie in the particular circumstances."[5]
That understanding extended to North America. Here, the impeachment process was used to address diverse misconduct by public officials, ranging from abuse of power and corruption to bribery and betrayal of the revolutionary cause.[6] As one scholar reports, "American colonists before the Revolution, and American states after the Revolution but before 1787, all impeached officials for noncriminal conduct."[7]
At the Constitutional Convention itself, no delegate linked impeachment to the technicalities of criminal law. On the contrary, the Framers invoked an array of broad, adaptable terms as grounds for removal—and when the standard was temporarily narrowed to "treason, or bribery," Mason objected that it must reach "great and dangerous" offenses against the Constitution. Here he cited Burke's call to impeach Hastings, whose acts were not crimes, but instead violated "those eternal laws of justice, which are our rule and our birthright."[8] To the Framers, impeachment was about abuse of power, betrayal of nation, and corruption of office and elections. It was meant to guard against these threats in every manifestation—known and unknown—that might someday afflict the Republic.
- ↑ Bowman, High Crimes and Misdemeanors at 44.
- ↑ 2 Story,Commentaries at 268.
- ↑ See Bowman, High Crimes and Misdemeanors at 44-47.
- ↑ Staff Report on Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment (1974) at 22.
- ↑ Berger, Impeachment at 62.
- ↑ Hoffer & Hull, Impeachment in America at 1-95.
- ↑ Bowman, High Crimes and Misdemeanors at 244.
- ↑ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France and Other Writings 409 (2015).
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