"Sunstein has written the story of impeachment every citizen needs to know. This is a remarkable, essential book." --Doris Kearns Goodwin As Benjamin Franklin famously put it, Americans have a republic, if we can keep it. Preserving the Constitution and the democratic system it supports is the public's responsibility. One route the Constitution provides for discharging that duty--a route rarely traveled--is impeachment. Cass R. Sunstein provides a succinct citizen's guide to an essential tool of self-government. He illuminates the constitutional design behind impeachment and emphasizes the people's role in holding presidents accountable. Despite intense interest in the subject, impeachment is widely misunderstood. Sunstein identifies and corrects a number of misconceptions. For example, he shows that the Constitution, not the House of Representatives, establishes grounds for impeachment, and that the president can be impeached for abuses of power that do not violate the law. Even neglect of duty counts among the "high crimes and misdemeanors" delineated in the republic's foundational document. Sunstein describes how impeachment helps make sense of our constitutional order, particularly the framers' controversial decision to install an empowered executive in a nation deeply fearful of kings. With an eye toward the past and the future, Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide considers a host of actual and imaginable arguments for a president's removal, explaining why some cases are easy and others hard, why some arguments for impeachment have been judicious and others not. In direct and approachable terms, it dispels the fog surrounding impeachment so that Americans of all political convictions may use their ultimate civic authority wisely.

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.

A sharp and eye-opening argument that impeachment is an essential American institution. "I guess these are yours. Impeach Eisenhower. Impeach Nixon. Impeach Lyndon Johnson. Impeach Ronald Reagan."—Annie Hall, going through Alvy Singer's political button collection in Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) This surprising and irreverent book by one of America's leading political reporters makes the case that impeachment is much more than a legal and congressional process—it is an essential instrument of America's democratic system. Articles of impeachment have been brought sixty-two times in American history. Thomas Jefferson himself forwarded the evidence for impeachment of the first federal official to be removed under the process—John Pickering in 1803. Impeachment is as American as apple pie. The founders designed impeachment as one of the checks against executive power. As John Nichols reveals in this fascinating look at impeachment's hidden history, impeachment movements—in addition to congressional proceedings themselves—have played an important role in countering an out-of-control executive branch. The threat of impeachment has worked to temper presidential excesses and to reassert democratic values in times of national drift. The Genius of Impeachment also makes clear that we sorely need such a movement today, and that both the president and vice president deserve impeachment. In the spirit of maverick congressmember Henry B. Gonzalez, who introduced articles of impeachment against both George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan for making war without a declaration, this book is a fearless call to Americans to hold our leaders accountable to democracy.

This is the first comprehensive analysis of the theory and practice of impeachment since the Watergate era. Litigation in the intervening period over the Senate's removal of three judges (most recently in connection with Walter Nixon v. United States) has raised doubts about Congress's interest in and capacity for conducting efficient, fair impeachment proceedings as well as about whether congressional judgments regarding the impeachability of federal judges are shielded from review by the other branches. Michael Gerhardt argues that impeachment is a far more effective process than commonly supposed and that it constitutes a special nonreviewable power confined solely to Congress for punishing certain executive and judicial misconduct. Without ignoring the implications of such a view for future rulings in separation of powers disputes, the author seeks primarily to establish impeachment's uniqueness by conveying a sense of its constitutional, historical, and political dimensions. In particular, he provides in Part I a comprehensive historical analysis of the impeachment process. In Part II he traces the practical problems and most troubling administrative difficulties in actual impeachment proceedings conducted by the House of Representatives and the Senate. Part III resolves the most significant constitutional issues recurring in the federal impeachment process, and Part IV examines proposed constitutional amendments and statutory proposals for reforming the federal impeachment process.

President Clinton's year of crisis, which began when his affair with Monica Lewinsky hit the front pages in January 1998, engendered a host of important questions of criminal and constitutional law, public and private morality; and political and cultural conflict.