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22 September 2017 / Athelstane Aamodt
Issue: 6672 / Categories: Features , Constitutional law
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Impeachment matters

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Athelstane Aamodt provides a master class in impeachment at home & abroad

Daniel Kammen, the US State Department’s Science Envoy, sent a letter of resignation to President Donald Trump last month. The first letter at the beginning of each paragraph of his letter spelt out the acrostic ‘IMPEACH’. There have been various calls from President Trump’s opponents for him to be impeached.

What is impeachment? How often has it been used? And does the same thing exist here in the UK?

The impeachment of a US President is governed, as you would expect, by the United States Constitution. The House of Representatives has the exclusive power to decide whether to impeach or not (‘impeachment’ is technically the process whereby the House formally charges someone with an offence). If the House votes by a simple majority on a resolution to impeach on a charge then the Senate will hear the trial which is presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (famously, during Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearing in 1999, the then Chief Justice William Rehnquist

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