Political Theories of Presidential Impeachment

초록

Impeachments have occurred increasingly in a number of presidential democracies. Despite this significance, political theorists have not addressed the norms and institutional design of impeachment with any depth. While relevant normative considerations have emerged in the fields of constitutional law and comparative politics, these have remained fragmented and contingent on constitutional systems in particular democracies. Approaching this problem from the history of political thought, this paper draws out a more integrated approach to theorizing impeachment by interpreting the closely contested debates that gave presidential impeachment its origin during the US Constitutional Convention of 1787. The paper argues that consequentialist and representative norms inform the basic role of impeachment and should be understood as having “lexical priority” over other considerations of institutional design, impeachment grounds, and procedures.

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