Cable Forum - View Single Post - Impeachment enquiry launched into Donald Trump

**Hugh** · 22-12-2019, 12:41

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/u...n-impeach.html

Quote:

Impeachment happens, according to Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor, only when the House transmits the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

So “technically speaking,” he said, “the president still hasn’t been impeached.”

That idea has left much of the legal academy unconvinced, including Laurence H. Tribe, one of Professor Feldman’s colleagues at Harvard. “The argument is textually bizarre, historically inaccurate, structurally misguided and functionally misleading,” Professor Tribe said.

Professor Feldman was one of three constitutional scholars to testify in favor of impeachment before the House Judiciary Committee this month. Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and the sole scholar invited by Republicans to testify against impeachment at that hearing, also disagreed with Professor Feldman.

Mr. Trump was impeached on Wednesday, Professor Turley said. “Article I, Section 2 says that the House ‘shall have the sole power of impeachment.’ It says nothing about a requirement of referral to complete that act.”...

...“If you think of the other meanings of the word ‘impeach’ — impeaching the credibility of a witness, for instance — it happens when you are looking at a person and saying ‘you have done wrong,’” Professor Feldman said. “You’re impeaching their character, you’re impeaching their credibility. That’s an act that you do in the forum where the decision will be made.”

But impeachment is functionally similar to a criminal indictment, and few people would say a grand jury had not indicted someone after voting to do so even if no trial followed. But Professor Feldman said that was a poor analogy.

The Constitution itself is terse. As Professor Turley noted, it gives the House “the sole power of impeachment,” which suggests that the House may also decide when it has impeached the president. The Senate, by contrast, is granted “the sole power to try all impeachments.”