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The charge of high crimes and misdemeanors covers allegations of misconduct by officials. Offenses by officials also include ordinary crimes, but perhaps with different standards of proof and punishment than for non-officials, on the grounds that more is expected of officials by their oaths of office.
The impeachment of the King's Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, 1st Earl of Suffolk in 1386 was the first case to use this charge. [1] [2] One charge under this heading alleged that de la Pole broke a promise to Parliament to follow the advice of a committee regarding improvement of the kingdom. Another charge said that because he failed to pay a ransom for Ghent, the city fell to the French.
The 1450 impeachment of William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, a descendant of Michael, was the next to allege charges under this title. He was charged with using his influence to obstruct justice as well as cronyism and wasting public money. Other charges against him included acts of high treason. [2]
Impeachment fell out of use after 1459, but Parliament revived it in the early 17th century to try the King's ministers. In 1621, Parliament impeached the King's Attorney General, Sir Henry Yelverton, for high crimes and misdemeanors. The charges included failing to prosecute after starting lawsuits and using authority before it was properly his. [3] [2]
In 1640, at the beginning of the Long Parliament, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, was impeached for "high misdemeanours" regarding his conduct in Ireland. Despite the repeated assurances of King Charles I, Strafford was eventually executed ("Put not your trust in princes.") the following year. [4]
After the Restoration, the scope of the charge grew to include negligence and abuse of power or trust while in office. For example, charges in the impeachment of Edward Russell, 1st Earl of Orford in 1701 included many violations of trust in his positions. [5] In this case, he abused his position in the Privy Council to make profits for himself; as Treasurer of the Navy he embezzled funds; and as Admiral of the Fleet he got a commission for the pirate William Kidd.
"High crimes and misdemeanors" is a phrase from Section 4 of Article Two of the United States Constitution: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
"High," in the legal and common vocabulary of the 17th and 18th centuries of "high crimes," is the activity by or against those who have special duties acquired by taking an oath of office that is not shared with ordinary persons. [6] A high crime can be done only by someone in a unique position of authority, which is political, who does things to circumvent justice. The phrase "high crimes and misdemeanors," used together, was a common phrase when the U.S. Constitution was written and did not require any stringent or demanding criteria for determining guilt. The phrase was historically used to cover an extensive range of crimes.
The Judiciary Committee's 1974 report "The Historical Origins of Impeachment" stated: "'High Crimes and Misdemeanors' has traditionally been considered a 'term of art', like such other constitutional phrases as 'levying war' and 'due process.' The Supreme Court has held that such phrases must be construed, not according to modern usage, but according to what the framers meant when they adopted them. In 1807, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote of the phrase "levying war":
It is a technical term. It is used in a very old statute of that country whose language is our language, and whose laws form the substratum of our laws. It is scarcely conceivable that the term was not employed by the framers of our constitution in the sense which had been affixed to it by those from whom we borrowed it. [7] [8]
Since 1386, the English Parliament had used the term "high crimes and misdemeanors" to describe one of the grounds to impeach officials of the crown. Officials accused of "high crimes and misdemeanors" were accused of offenses as varied as misappropriating government funds, appointing unfit subordinates, not prosecuting cases, promoting themselves ahead of more deserving candidates, threatening a grand jury, disobeying an order from Parliament, arresting a man to keep him from running for Parliament, helping "suppress petitions to the King to call a Parliament," etc. [9]
Benjamin Franklin asserted that the power of impeachment and removal was necessary for those times when the Executive "rendered himself obnoxious," and the Constitution should provide for the "regular punishment of the Executive when his conduct should deserve it, and for his honorable acquittal when he should be unjustly accused." James Madison said that "impeachment... was indispensable" to defend the community against "the incapacity, negligence or perfidy of the chief Magistrate." With a single executive, Madison argued, unlike a legislature whose collective nature provided security, "loss of capacity or corruption was more within the compass of probable events, and either of them might be fatal to the Republic." [10]
The process of impeaching someone in the House of Representatives and convicting in the Senate is complex, made to be the balance against efforts to remove people from office for minor reasons that could easily be determined by the standard of "high crimes and misdemeanors". It was George Mason who offered up the term "high crimes and misdemeanors" as one of the criteria to remove public officials who abuse their office. Their original intentions can be gleaned by the phrases and words that were proposed before, such as "high misdemeanor," "maladministration," or "other crime." Edmund Randolph said impeachment should be reserved for those who "misbehave." Charles Cotesworth Pinckney said, It should be reserved "for those who behave amiss, or betray their public trust." As can be seen from all these references to "high crimes and misdemeanors," the definition or its rationale does not relate to specific offenses. This gives much freedom of interpretation to the House of Representatives and the Senate. Constitutional law, by nature, is not concerned with being specific. The courts, through precedence and the legislature, through lawmaking, make constitutional provisions clear. In this case, the legislature (the House of Representatives and the Senate) acts as a court and can create a precedent.
In Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton said, "those offences which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated political, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself." [11]
The first impeachment conviction by the United States Senate was in 1804 of John Pickering, a judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire, for chronic intoxication. Federal judges have been impeached and removed from office for tax evasion, conspiracy to solicit a bribe, and making false statements to a grand jury. [12]
President Andrew Johnson was impeached on February 24, 1868, in the United U.S. House of Representatives on eleven articles of impeachment detailing his "high crimes and misdemeanors", [13] in accordance with Article Two of the United States Constitution. (The Senate fell one vote short of conviction.) The House's primary charge against Johnson was with violation of the Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress the previous year. Specifically, he had removed Edwin M. Stanton, the Secretary of War from office and replaced him with John Schofield, but it was unclear if Johnson had violated the act as Stanton was nominated by President Abraham Lincoln and not by Johnson.
During the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1999, White House Counsel Charles Ruff described a "narrow" interpretation of "high crimes and misdemeanors" as requiring "a standard that the framers intentionally set at this extraordinarily high level to ensure that only the most serious offenses and in particular those that subverted our system of government would justify overturning a popular election". Writing in 1999, Mark R. Slusar commented that the narrow interpretation seemed most common among legal scholars and senators. [14]
Alejandro Mayorkas was impeached in 2024 but the Senate ended the trial without determining guilt after deciding that the articles of impeachment did not allege high crimes and misdemeanors and so did not constitute a valid impeachment. [15]
Impeachment is a process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. It may be understood as a unique process involving both political and legal elements.
A misdemeanor is any "lesser" criminal act in some common law legal systems. Misdemeanors are generally punished less severely than more serious felonies, but theoretically more so than administrative infractions and regulatory offences. Typically, misdemeanors are punished with prison time of no longer than one year, monetary fines, or community service.
Article One of the Constitution of the United States establishes the legislative branch of the federal government, the United States Congress. Under Article One, Congress is a bicameral legislature consisting of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Article One grants Congress various enumerated powers and the ability to pass laws "necessary and proper" to carry out those powers. Article One also establishes the procedures for passing a bill and places various limits on the powers of Congress and the states from abusing their powers.
In the United States, impeachment is the process by which a legislature may bring charges against an officeholder for misconduct alleged to have been committed with a penalty of removal. Impeachment may also occur at the state level if the state or commonwealth has provisions for it under its constitution. Impeachment might also occur with tribal governments as well as at the local level of government.
Federalist No. 65 is an essay by Alexander Hamilton, the sixty-fifth of The Federalist Papers. It was published on March 7, 1788, under the pseudonym "Publius", the name under which all The Federalist papers were published. Titled "The Powers of the Senate Continued", it carries on a theme begun by John Jay in Federalist No. 64.
Abuse of power or abuse of authority, in the form of "malfeasance in office" or "official abuse of power", is the commission of an unlawful act, done in an official capacity, which affects the performance of official duties. Malfeasance in office is often a just cause for removal of an elected official by statute or recall election. Officials who abuse their power are often corrupt.
Impeachment in the Philippines is an expressed power of the Congress of the Philippines to formally charge a serving government official with an impeachable offense. After being impeached by the House of Representatives, the official is then tried in the Senate. If convicted, the official is either removed from office or censured.
The impeachment of Andrew Johnson was initiated on February 24, 1868, when the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution to impeach Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, for "high crimes and misdemeanors". The alleged high crimes and misdemeanors were afterwards specified in eleven articles of impeachment adopted by the House on March 2 and 3, 1868. The primary charge against Johnson was that he had violated the Tenure of Office Act. Specifically, that he had acted to remove from office Edwin Stanton and to replace him with Brevet Major General Lorenzo Thomas as secretary of war ad interim. The Tenure of Office Act had been passed by Congress in March 1867 over Johnson's veto with the primary intent of protecting Stanton from being fired without the Senate's consent. Stanton often sided with the Radical Republican faction and did not have a good relationship with Johnson.
Alejandro Nicholas Mayorkas is an American lawyer and politician who is the 7th United States Secretary of Homeland Security, serving since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Mayorkas previously served as director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services from 2009 to 2013, and the 6th Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security from 2013 to 2016.
The impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson, 17th president of the United States, was held in the United States Senate and concluded with acquittal on three of eleven charges before adjourning sine die without a verdict on the remaining charges. It was the first impeachment trial of a U.S. president and was the sixth federal impeachment trial in U.S. history. The trial began March 5, 1868, and adjourned on May 26.
The impeachment process against Richard Nixon was initiated by the United States House of Representatives on October 30, 1973, during the course of the Watergate scandal, when multiple resolutions calling for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon were introduced immediately following the series of high-level resignations and firings widely called the "Saturday Night Massacre". The House Committee on the Judiciary soon began an official investigation of the president's role in Watergate, and, in May 1974, commenced formal hearings on whether sufficient grounds existed to impeach Nixon of high crimes and misdemeanors under Article II, Section 4, of the United States Constitution. This investigation was undertaken one year after the United States Senate established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities to investigate the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex during the 1972 presidential election, and the Republican Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement; during those hearings the scope of the scandal became apparent and the existence of the Nixon White House tapes was revealed.
Impeachment is a process in which the Parliament of the United Kingdom may prosecute and try individuals, normally holders of public office, for high treason or other crimes and misdemeanours. First used to try William Latimer, 4th Baron Latimer during the English Good Parliament of 1376, it was a rare mechanism whereby Parliament was able to arrest and depose ministers of the Crown. The last impeachment was that of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville in 1806; since then, other forms of democratic scrutiny have been favoured and the process has been considered as an obsolete—but still extant—power of Parliament.
During his presidency, Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, saw multiple efforts during his presidency to impeach him, culminating in his formal impeachment on February 24, 1868, which was followed by a Senate impeachment trial in which he was acquitted.
The first impeachment inquiry against Andrew Johnson was launched by a vote of the United States House of Representatives on January 7, 1867, to investigate the potential impeachment of the President of the United States, Andrew Johnson. It was run by the House Committee on the Judiciary.
Samuel Chase, an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, was impeached by the United States House of Representatives on March 12, 1804 on eight articles of impeachment alleging misconduct. His impeachment trial before the United States Senate delivered an acquittal on March 1, 1805, with none of the eight articles receiving the two-thirds majority needed for a conviction.
Eleven articles of impeachment against United States President Andrew Johnson were adopted by the United States House of Representatives on March 2 and 3, 1868 as part of the impeachment of Johnson. An impeachment resolution had previously been adopted by the House on February 24, 1868. Each of the articles were a separate charge which Johnson would be tried for in his subsequent impeachment trial before the United States Senate.
In the United States, federal impeachment is the process by which the House of Representatives charges the president, vice president, or another civil federal officer for alleged misconduct. The House can impeach an individual with a simple majority of the present members or other criteria adopted by the House according to Article One, Section 2, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution.
On January 28, 2024, House Republicans indicated their intention to move forward with two articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security, alleging "willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law" in regards to federal immigration laws and breach of the public trust. On January 31, Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee approved the articles along party lines for referral to the full House. Mayorkas is the second Cabinet member in history, and first since Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1876, to be impeached.
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