Impeachment

IMPEACHMENT, the English form of judicial parliamen tary procedure against criminals, in which the House of Commons are the prosecutors and the House of Lords the judges. It differs from bills of attainder (q.v.) in being strictly judicial. When the House of Commons has accepted a motion for impeachment, the mover is ordered to proceed to the bar of the House of Lords, and there impeach the accused "in the name of the House of Commons, and of all the Commons of the United Kingdom." The charges are formulated in articles, to each of which the ac cused may deliver a written answer. The Commons appoint man agers to conduct the prosecution, but the whole House in com mittee attends the trial. The defendant may appear by counsel. The president of the House of Lords is the lord high steward in the case of peers impeached for high treason ; in other cases the lord chancellor. The hearing takes place as in an ordinary trial, the defence being allowed to call witnesses if necessary, and the prosecution having a right of reply. At the end of the case the president "puts to each peer, beginning with the junior baron, the questions upon the first article, whether the accused be guilty of the crimes charged therein. Each article is proceeded with separately in the same manner, the lord high steward giving his own opinion the last" (May's Parliamentary Practice, c. xxiii.). Should the accused be found guilty, judgment follows if the Commons move for it, but not otherwise. The Commons thus retain the power of pardon in their own hands, and this right they have in several cases expressly claimed by resolution, de claring that it is not parliamentary for their lordships to give judgment "until the same be first demanded by this House." Spiritual peers occupy an anomalous position in the trial of peers, as not being themselves ennobled in blood; it is customary for them to withdraw before judgment is given, entering a protest "saving to themselves and their successors all such rights in judicature as they have by law, and by right ought to have." An impeachment, unlike other parliamentary proceedings, is not inter rupted by prorogation, nor even by dissolution. Proceedings in the House of Commons preliminary to an impeachment are sub ject to the ordinary rules, and in the Warren Hastings case an act was passed to prevent the preliminary proceedings from dis continuance by prorogation and dissolution. A royal pardon can not be pleaded in bar of an impeachment, though it is within the royal prerogative to pardon after the lords have pronounced judgment. The point was raised in the case of the earl of Danby in 1679, and the rule was finally settled by the Act of Settlement. Persons found guilty on impeachment may be reprieved or par doned like other convicts. Impeachment will lie against all kinds of crimes and misdemeanours, and against offenders of all ranks. In the case of Simon de Beresford, tried before the House of Lords in 1330, the House declared "that the judgment be not drawn into example or consequence in time to come, whereby the said peers may be charged hereafter to judge others than their peers," from which Blackstone and others have inferred that "a commoner cannot be impeached before the Lords for any capital offence, but only for high misdemeanours." In the case of Edward Fitzharris in 1681, the House of Commons in answer to a resolu tion of the Lords suspending the impeachment, declared it to be their undoubted right "to impeach any peer or commoner for treason or any other crime or misdemeanour." And the House of Lords has in practice recognized the right of the Commons to impeach whomsoever they will. The procedure has, however, been reserved for great political offenders whom the ordinary powers of the law might fail to reach. It has now fallen into desuetude. The last impeachments were those of Warren Hastings and Lord Melville (1806) , but an unsuccessful attempt was made by Thomas C. Anstey to impeach Lord Palmerston in 1848.

United States.

In the United States the procedure of im peachment both in the national and in almost all of the state governments is very similar to that described above. The national constitution prescribes that the House of Representatives "shall have the sole power of impeachment" and that "the Senate shall have the sole power to try all impeachments." The House ap points managers to conduct the prosecution at the bar of the Senate, and the vote of the Senate is taken by putting the question separately to each member, who, during the trial, must be on oath or affirmation. In ordinary cases the president or president pro tempore of the Senate presides, but when the president of the United States is on trial the presiding officer must be the chief justice of the United States Supreme Court. A two-thirds vote is necessary for conviction. The president, vice-president or any civil officer of the United States may be impeached for "treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanours," and if con victed, is removed from office and may be disqualified for holding any office under the government in future. The officer after re moval is also "liable and subject to indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law." The term "civil officers of the United States" has been construed as being inapplicable to members of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The president's pardoning power does not extend to officers convicted, on impeachment, of offences against the United States. Since the organization of the Federal government there have been only eleven impeachment trials before the United States Senate, and of these only three resulted in convictions. The two most famous cases are those of Justice Samuel Chase of the United States Supreme Court in 18o5, and of President Andrew Johnson, in 1868.

See English constitutional histories generally (Maitland etc.) ; also, for U.S.A., W. A. Estrich "20 Cases and Comment 454," etc. Harvard Law Review, 684 etc.