High Crimes and Misdemeanors in Presidential Impeachment

US Constitution states that the President is subject to removal from office upon impeachment and conviction of treason, bribery and 'other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.' In this book, Brown examines history behind this clause as well as the impeachments of Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Clinton.

The United States Constitution provides in Article II, Section 4 that the President and other civil officers of the federal government are subject to removal from office upon impeachment by the House of Representatives and conviction by the Senate of treason, bribery and "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." However, no authoritative definition of "high crimes and misdemeanors" was provided by the Framers either in the Constitution itself or in the debates at the constitutional convention. As a consequence, the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" has been a subject of controversy beginning with the first impeachment and trial of Judge John Pickering in 1804 and continuing through the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton. The study seeks to discern the meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors" not only from the record of the constitutional convention and the state ratifying conventions, together with history of British parliamentary impeachments and the experience of the American colonies and states which informed the Framers'' adoption of "high crimes and misdemeanors" as grounds for removal of the President, but also from the circumstances that resulted in the impeachments of Presidents Andrew Johnson, Richard M. Nixon and Clinton, as Congress labored to give substance to the "high crimes and misdemeanors" standard.