Part 3: Evidence from the Drafting of the Impeachment Clauses
This is the third part of a four‐part series on the 1876 impeachment trial of former Secretary of War William Belknap. In each part, I will examine a different category of argument made at that trial on the question whether the Senate has constitutional jurisdiction to try and convict a former officer. In Part 1, I summarized the arguments at the trial based on constitutional text. In Part 2, I turned to the arguments based on the English practice of impeachment prior to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. In this part, I reach the arguments based on James Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention on the framing of the impeachment clauses.
Part 2: The History of the Word “Impeachment”
This is the second part of a four‐part series on the 1876 impeachment trial of former Secretary of War William Belknap. In each part, I will examine a different category of argument made at that trial on the question whether the Senate has constitutional jurisdiction to try and convict a former officer. In Part 1, I summarized the arguments at the trial based on constitutional text. In this part, I turn to the arguments based on the history and meaning of the word “impeachment” and the English practice of impeachment prior to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution.
Part 4: The Consequences of Late Impeachment
This is the fourth and final part of a series on the 1876 impeachment trial of former Secretary of War William Belknap. In each part, I have examined a different category of argument made at that trial on the question whether the Senate has constitutional jurisdiction to try and convict a former officer. In Part 1, I summarized the arguments at the trial based on constitutional text. In Part 2, I turned to the arguments based on the English practice of impeachment prior to the drafting of the U.S. Constitution. In Part 3, I recounted the arguments based on James Madison’s notes from the Constitutional Convention on the framing of the impeachment clauses.