To End a Presidency

by Laurence Tribe

  41. John Labovitz, Presidential Impeachment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 129–130.

  42. Quoted in Lewis Deschler, Deschler’s Precedents of the United States House of Representatives, vol. 3 (1974), 639.

  43. Thurman Arnold, The Symbols of Government (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1935), 101, quoted in Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin, 133 S. Ct. 2411, 2433 n.2 (2013) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting).

  44. Jane Chong, “Impeachment-Proof? The President’s Unconstitutional Abuse of His Constitutional Powers,” Lawfare, January 2, 2018.

  45. Noah Feldman, “Arpaio Pardon Would Show Contempt for Constitution,” Bloomberg, August 23, 2017.

  46. David G. Savage, “Trump Could Pay a Price if He Hands Out Pardons in the Russia Probe as He Did for Joe Arpaio,” Los Angeles Times, August 31, 2017.

  47. Mike DeBonis, “House Votes to Kill Texas Lawmaker’s Trump Impeachment Effort,” Washington Post, December 6, 2017.

  48. Zack Beauchamp, “How Donald Trump’s Kleptocracy Is Undermining American Democracy,” Vox, July 31, 2017.

  49. David Robertson, Debates and other Proceedings of the Convention of Virginia (2nd ed. 1805) (1788), 345.

  CHAPTER 3: TO IMPEACH OR NOT TO IMPEACH

  1. 145 Cong. Rec. 2,569–2,571 (1999) (statement of Sen. Byrd).

  2. Gerald M. Boyd, “Reagan Terms Nicaraguan Rebels ‘Moral Equal of Founding Fathers,’” New York Times, March 2, 1985.

  3. Anthony Lewis, “Abroad at Home; The Empty Chair,” New York Times, February 27, 1987.

  4. Editorial, “The Laws, Unfaithfully Executed,” New York Times, November 19, 1987.

  5. “Excerpts from Remarks by Panel Chairmen,” New York Times, May 6, 1987.

  6. Quoted in David E. Kyvig, The Age of Impeachment (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 253.

  7. Ibid., 251.

  8. David H. Gans, “Republicans Who Block Obama’s Supreme Court Pick Are Violating the Constitution,” New Republic, March 16, 2016.

  9. Michael D. Ramsey, “Why the Senate Doesn’t Have to Act on Merrick Garland’s Nomination,” The Atlantic, May 15, 2016.

  10. 145 Cong. Rec. 2,569–2,571 (1999) (statement of Sen. Byrd).

  11. Akhil Reed Amar, “On Impeaching Presidents,” 28 Hofstra Law Review 291, 310 (1999).

  12. 145 Cong. Rec. 579 (1999) (statement of Sen. Harkin); Lizette Alvarez, “The Trial of the President: The Senator; Harkin Wins Endorsement of Wider Role Than Jury,” New York Times, January 16, 1999.

  13. “Jan. 15: Sen. Harkin’s Objection,” The Impeachment Trial, Washington Post, January 15, 1999.

  14. Lizette Alvarez, “The Trial of the President: The Senator; Harkin Wins Endorsement of Wider Role Than Jury,” New York Times, January 16, 1999.

  15. See Thomas E. Mann, The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

  16. See Norman Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism (New York: Basic Books, 2012).

  17. See Eric A. Posner and Adrian Vermeule, The Executive Unbound: After the Madisonian Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 4.

  18. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 635 (1952) (Jackson, J., concurring in the judgment and opinion of the Court).

  19. Josh Chafetz, Congress’s Constitution: Legislative Authority and the Separation of Powers (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2017), 24.

  20. Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109, 111 (1959).

  21. Jack Goldsmith, Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency after 9/11 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012), 209.

  22. Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams (Chapel Hill, NC, and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 348.

  23. Ezra Klein, “How to Stop an Autocracy,” Vox, February 7, 2017.

  24. Quoted in President Jackson’s Message of Protest to the Senate, April 15, 1834.

  25. Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House (New York: Random House, 2009), 279.

  26. President Jackson’s Message of Protest to the Senate; April 15, 1834, Avalon Project, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/ajack006.asp.

  27. Meacham, American Lion, 261.

  28. Appendix to the Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. 93 (1848).

  29. Ibid., 157.

  30. Bill Clinton, My Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 486.

  31. Benjamin Harrison, This Country of Ours (New York: C. Scribner, 1897), 320.

  32. William H. Rehnquist, Grand Inquests: The Historic Impeachments of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson (New York: Morrow, 1992); William H. Rehnquist, “The Impeachment Clause: A Wild Card in the Constitution,” Northwestern University Law Review 85 (1991): 903.

  33. 145 Cong. Rec. 2,610–2,612 (1999) (statement of Rep. Hyde).

  34. Keith E. Whittington, “What Is the Downside of Not Impeaching?” Lawfare, July 25, 2017.

  35. Chong, “To Impeach a President.”

  36. James Buchanan, “Veto Message (March 28, 1860),” in Veto Messages of the Presidents of the United States with the Action of Congress Thereon, ed. Ben Perley Poore (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1886), 276.

  37. David Blumenthal and James Monroe, The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 222.

  38. John A. Farrell, Richard Nixon: The Life (New York: Doubleday, 2017), 530–531.

  39. Clinton, My Life, 494.

  40. Cristiano Lima, “Roger Stone Predicts Violent ‘Insurrection’ if Trump Is Impeached,” Politico, August 24, 2017.

  41. William J. Jackman, et al., The History and Government of the United States: A History of the American People, vol. 5 (Chicago: L.W. Walter Company, 1911), 1364.

  42. Heather Caygle, “Nadler Wins Top Democratic Post on Judiciary Committee,” Politico, December 20, 2017.

  43. 145 Cong. Rec. 2,569–2,571 (1999) (statement of Sen. Byrd).

  CHAPTER 4: CONGRESS, THE DECIDER

  1. Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2001) (per curiam).

  2. Quoted in Joan Biskupic, American Original (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 248.

  3. Bush, 531 U.S. at 128 (Stevens, J., dissenting).

  4. David Souter, “Commencement Address,” Harvard Law Review 124 (2010): 429, 433.

  5. James Madison, “Observations on the ‘Draught of a Constitution for Virginia’” (October 15, 1788), in Writings (1999), 415–416.

  6. James Madison, “Observations on Jefferson’s Draft of a Constitution for Virginia,” October 15, 1788, Papers 11: 285–293.

  7. Max Farrand, ed., “May 29,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 22.

  8. Farrand, “The Pinckney Plan,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 3, 596.

  9. Farrand, “June 2,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1, 85.

  10. Farrand “June 2,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1, 85.

  11. Farrand, “June 13,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1, 223–224.

  12. Farrand, “June 15,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1, 244.

  13. Farrand, “Committee of Detail, III,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 136.

  14. Farrand, “August 6,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 185–86.

  15. Farrand, “September 4,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 493.

  16. Farrand, “September 8,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 551.

  17. Farrand, “August 9,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 2
27.

  18. The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, 2nd ed., vol. 4, ed. Jonathan Elliot (Washington, DC: Self-Published, 1836), 113.

  19. E. J. Dionne Jr., Norman J. Ornstein, and Thomas E. Mann, One Nation after Trump (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 28–29.

  20. Michael J. Klarman, The Framers’ Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 232.

  21. Mason, September 4

  22. Farrand, “June 12,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1, 218.

  23. Klarman, The Framers’ Coup, 608.

  24. N.Y. Const. art. VI, § 24.

  25. Mo. Const. art. VII, § 2.

  26. Neb. Const. art. III, § 17.

  27. Farrand, “July 18,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 41–42; and “September 8,” vol. 2, 551.

  28. Gouverneur Morris raises this concern at “September 4,” in Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 500.

  29. Farrand, “September 8,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 551.

  30. Farrand, “July 18,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 42.

  31. Farrand, “September 8,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 551.

  32. Farrand, “September 8,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 551.

  33. Farrand, “September 14,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 2, 627.

  34. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 65, in The Federalist Papers, ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: Signet Classic, 2003).

  35. Farrand, “June 11,” in The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 1, 198.

  36. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, § 785 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1873), 551.

  37. Woodrow Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1901), 275–276.

  38. Quoted in George Lardner Jr., “Nixon Case as Precedent Could Bode Well, Ill for Clinton,” Washington Post, September 27, 1998.

  39. Gerhardt, The Federal Impeachment Process, 40.

  40. Richard Re, “Promising the Constitution,” Northwestern University Law Review 110 (2016): 299, 304.

  41. Quoted in Linda Greenhouse, “William H. Rehnquist, Architect of Conservative Court, Dies at 80,” New York Times, September 5, 2005.

  42. “Arlen Specter: Snarlin’ No More,” The Economist, October 20, 2012.

  43. Russell Spivak, “A Premature Primer: How Do Impeachment Proceeding Actually Work?” Lawfare, June 5, 2017.

  44. Clinton, My Life, 845.

  45. Richard Posner, An Affair of State: The Investigation, Impeachment, and Trial of President Clinton (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 127.

  46. Ibid., 128.

  47. Black, Impeachment, 17.

  48. Charlie Savage, “How the Impeachment Process Works,” New York Times, May 17, 2017.

  49. Keith E. Whittington, “An Impeachment Should Not Be a Partisan Affair,” Lawfare, May 16, 2017.

  50. Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3.

  51. Andrew Kohut, How the Watergate Crisis Eroded Public Support for Richard Nixon, Pew Research Center, August 8, 2014.

  52. Jack Brewster, “Why You Should Be Skeptical about Polls on Impeaching Trump,” Time, June 7, 2017.

  53. CNN/ORC Poll 7, July 25, 2014, at 4, https://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2014 /images/07/24/rel7e.pdf.

  54. John F. Harris, The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House (New York: Random House, 2005), 357.

  55. Nate Silver, “Will Donald Trump Be Impeached?” FiveThirty-Eight, May 22, 2017.

  56. Clinton, My Life, 835.

  57. John A. Farrell, “What Today’s Democrats Can Learn from Tip O’Neill’s Reagan Strategy,” Politico, November 24, 2016.

  58. Thomas P. O’Neill, “Frenemies: A Love Story,” New York Times, October 5, 2012.

  59. Quoted in William B. Perkins, “The Political Nature of Impeachment in the United States,” in Checking Executive Power: Presidential Impeachment in Comparative Perspective, ed. Jody C. Baumgartner and Naoko Kada (Westport: Praeger, 2003), 22.

  60. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, The Final Days (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 415.

  61. Ibid., 391.

  62. David O. Stewart, Impeached: The Trial of President Andrew Johnson and the Fight for Lincoln’s Legacy (New York, Simon and Schuster, 2009), 317.

  63. Evan Thomas, Being Nixon: A Man Divided (New York: Random House, 2015), 241.

  64. Ibid., 469.

  CHAPTER 5: IMPEACHMENT TALK

  1. 19 Annals of Cong. 1174 (1809).

  2. Letter from Josiah Quincy to John Adams (December 15, 1808).

  3. Edmund Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy (1874), 88.

  4. Henry Adams, History of the United States, vol. 4 (New York: Scribner, 1909), 422.

  5. 19 Annals of Cong. 1176 (1809).

  6. Ibid.

  7. Ibid., 1182.

  8. Quincy, Life of Josiah Quincy, 183.

  9. Kyvig, The Age of Impeachment, 1.

  10. George Washington’s Letter to Catherine Macaulay Graham, January 9, 1790.

  11. Letter from Casca in Petersburg Intelligencer, printed in the Aurora General Advertiser, October 16, 1795.

  12. Letter from Pittachus, To the Editor of the Aurora, Aurora General Advertiser, November 26, 1795.

  13. Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Ritchie (December 25, 1820).

  14. 10 Reg. Deb. 1510 (1834).

  15. Cong. Globe, 30th Cong., 1st Sess. app. at 157 (1848).

  16. Ron Chernow, Grant (New York: Penguin Press, 2017), 825.

  17. Ulysses S. Grant, “Message to the House of Representatives (May 4, 1876),” in A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897, vol. 7, ed. James D. Richardson (Washington, DC: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1897), 362.

  18. Milford W. Howard, The American Plutocracy (New York: Holland Pub. Co., 1895), 101.

  19. “A Week of the World,” The Illustrated American, June 6, 1896, at 7524.

  20. Woodrow Wilson, “Address at Auditorium, Omaha, Nebraska (September 8, 1919),” in Messages and Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 2, ed. Albert Shaw (New York: Review of Reviews Corporation, 1924), 810.

  21. George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 430.

  22. Letter from Henry Cabot Lodge to Theodore Roosevelt, March 1, 1915.

  23. “Chicago Cheers Senate Radicals,” New York Times, September 11, 1919, at 8.

  24. “‘Impeach Wilson,’ Shout Kansas City Anti-League Crown,” San Diego Union, September 14, 1919, at 1.

  25. “Chicago Cheers Senate Radicals,” at 1.

  26. “Seek Men Who Want Wilson Impeached,” New York Times, July 19, 1919, at 20.

  27. “House Tables Move to Impeach Hoover,” Washington Post, December 14, 1932, at 1, 3.

  28. “House Rebukes Bill to Impeach Hoover, 361–8,” New York Herald Tribune, December 14, 1932, at 6.

  29. “Colleagues Plan to Put M’Fadden in Silent Limbo,” New York Herald Tribune, December 18, 1932, at 11.

  30. “Just a National Nuisance,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 15, 1932, at 1.

  31. Kathy Gilsinan, “Thanksgiving in a Foxhole, 1950,” The Atlantic, November 26, 2014.

  32. Memorandum from Joint Chiefs of Staff to Commander in Chief, European Command, December 6, 1950.

  33. Harry S. Truman, Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: 1946–52, Years of Trial and Hope (New York: Doubleday, 1956), 441–442.

  34. Military Situation in the Far East: Hearing Before the Select Committee on Armed Services and Foreign Relations, 82nd Cong. 732 (1951) (statement
of Gen. Omar Bradley).

  35. Radio Report to the American People on Korea and U.S. Policy in the Far East, 1951 Pub. Papers (April 11, 1951), 226.

  36. David McCullough, Truman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 844.

  37. Editorial, “Impeach Truman,” Chicago Tribune, April 12, 1951, at 1.

  38. McCullough, Truman, 842.

  39. William White, “G.O.P. Hits Ouster,” New York Times, April 12, 1951, at 3.

  40. Ibid.

  41. McCullough, Truman, 896–897.

  42. 98 Cong. Rec. 4156 (April 21, 1952).

  43. 98 Cong. Rec. 4418 (April 24, 1952); 98 Cong. Rec. 4396 (April 24, 1952).

  44. “Transcript of Truman’s News Conference Explaining His Powers,” New York Times, April 25, 1952, at 4.

  45. Transcript of Oral Argument, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, Civil Action Nos. 1550-52, 1655-52, 1539-52, 1647-52, 1732-52, 1700-52, 1549-52 (D.D.C. April 24, 1952), in Transcript of Record, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, at 371 (1952).

  46. Ibid.

  47. See, e.g., United States v. Stuart, 489 U.S. 353, 374–375 (1989); Nixon v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 731, 757 (1982); Ex parte Grossman, 267 U.S. 87, 121 (1925).

  48. Larry Blomstedt, Truman, Congress, and Korea: The Politics of America’s First Undeclared War (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 173.

  49. Youngstown, 343 U.S. at 640 (Jackson, J., concurring in the judgment and opinion of the Court).

  50. The leading account of this theory is Kyvig, The Age of Impeachment.

  51. H.R. Res. 370, 98th Cong. (1983).

  52. James Dao, “Rep. Ted Weiss, 64, Dies; Liberal Stalwart in House,” New York Times, September 15, 1992.

  53. 129 Cong. Rec. 32130 (November 10, 1983).

  54. John Meacham, Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush (New York: Random House, 2015), 452.

  55. Ibid., 453.

  56. Ibid., 455.

  57. Martin Weil, “Henry Gonzales, 37-Year Texas Representative, Dies,” Washington Post, November 29, 2000.

  58. H.R. Res. 34, 102nd Cong. (January 16, 1991).

  59. H.R. Res. 86, 102nd Cong. (February 21, 1991).

  60. Hugh Heclo, “Campaigning and Governing: A Conspectus,” in The Permanent Campaign and Its Future, ed. Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution, 2000), 1, 30.