XDA

An ex-friend challenged my very sound construing the impeachment section of the Constitution with an article from earlier this year in the Atlantic. Although that formerly good magazine has gone a little loopy left over the years, it is still worth taking seriously.

The author is Frank Bowman, whom I happen to know, as we were fellow deputy district attorneys in the mid-80s in Denver. He was almost universally disliked in the office but not a complete fool so I have read and re-read his work.

The verdict I pass on Bowman's article is that the term "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" in our Constitution does not mean "things other than crimes and misdemeanors".

Here is why I know this. The Oxford English Dictionary says this about the word "crime": It comes from Latin word crimen which means accusation or offense; became part of English language in the 12th Century and has always meant, an act punishable by law, forbidden by statute.

Duh!

But here is the kicker: in 1769, in the gold standard for legal terms, Blackstone, it was used as follows: A crime or misdemeanor is an act committed, or omitted, in violation of public law either forbidding or commanding it. And Blackstone in the same year said that crime and misdemeanor are mere synonymous terms.

That means that less than 20 years before the Constitution was written, to all the lawyers in the English speaking part of the world, crime and misdemeanor meant crime just as we know it today. Breaking the law, breaking the law, breaking the law, breaking the law, as Rob Halford used to sing.

Here is an interesting part of Bowman's otherwise not very convincing piece:

The phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” entered the American Constitution because George Mason of Virginia was unhappy that, as the Constitutional Convention was drawing to a close, the class of impeachable offenses had been limited to “treason or bribery.” Mason wanted a much broader definition....Mason’s first suggested addition—“maladministration”—was thought too expansive, whereupon he offered, and the convention accepted....“high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

But what are the two amorphous articles of impeachment proposed for President Trump, which do not describe a crime, if not mere allegations of "maladministration"?

So the Democrats, in their idiocy, have violated the Constitution by returning impeachment to a concept that was considered and rejected by the men writing it.

Thanks for the info, Frank.



Portrait of lesser know Virginia hero of the Constitutional Convention, George Mason IV

Labels: High Crimes and Misdemeanors Does not Mean Things Other than High Crimes and Misdemeanors

I have been having some success lately in front of Colorado's Court of Appeals regarding poor use of the rules for construing a statute. I won't bore you with the list of these rules, because if the language of the statute is clear on its face, you don't go further. The statute says what it says.

So, let's apply that first, simple rule to the Constitution, Article II, Section 4; that is, let's read the section, which is short and states:

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."






The Impeachment hearings are so boring, even the chairman fell asleep. 

UPDATE: Unless there are parts of the United States Code which make the two proposed articles of impeachment actual crimes (and I doubt it, but I will look), it seems I was correct in my prediction above.

Labels: Impeachment Requires Crime