Even Impeachment Has to Follow the Rules

Amid the grandstanding in the House of Representatives, one key point can sometimes get lost: While impeachment is certainly a political process, it is not a purely political one. The judgments that Congress makes throughout the process are substantially but not entirely constrained by legal standards set out in the Constitution.

If impeachment were a purely political process, Congress could legitimately impeach and remove a president from office for any reason or no reason at all. This would make impeachment akin to a vote of no confidence in a parliamentary system, where the legislature can at any time remove its chosen prime minister—albeit with a heightened requirement for removal in the Senate. Conversely, if impeachment were a purely legal process, Congress’s sole function would be to determine the facts and apply the relevant legal standards to those facts to determine whether the president has committed an impeachable offense.

One way to understand how law and politics intersect throughout the impeachment process, therefore, is with this test: Imagine that a particular member of the House or the Senate believes that there is a “correct” legal answer to the question of whether, on the evidence before Congress, the president has committed an impeachable offense. Can they properly vote the other way? Can they vote, in other words, against the evidence? By applying this test to the different stages of the impeachment process, one can