ABSTRACT
US impeachment provisions, which are found in the first two articles of the US Constitution, allow the president, vice-president and other civil offices to be charged by the US House of Representatives. They can be removed, and possibly barred, from future office if found guilty by two-thirds majorities of the US Senate of ‘Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors.’ Colonial and subsequent state legislatures had already been mimicking and developing earlier British practices prior to the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which adapted impeachment as part of a system of separated powers. The definition of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ remains elusive. Initially applied to Senator William Blount, whose 1799 impeachment trial did not result in conviction, it was successfully used in 1804 to remove federal judge John Pickering, whose behavior appears attributable to alcohol-induced declining mental capacities. The impeachment of Justice Samuel Chase for intemperate behavior did not result in his removal from the US Supreme Court. Other lower federal judges have been impeached and convicted, and President Nixon resigned under the threat of impeachment, but none of the three presidents who were actually impeached have been convicted and removed from office.
