Glossary on the Republic

Impeachment

Union

Impeachment is not removal. It is an accusation, the political equivalent of an indictment, and most people get that backwards.

To impeach an official does not mean to remove them. It means to formally charge them. Impeachment is only the first step, the accusation, and it comes from a Latin root meaning to catch or ensnare, by way of a word for fetter.

The Constitution splits the process between the two houses for a reason. The House of Representatives has the sole power to impeach, bringing charges by a simple majority vote. Then the Senate holds a trial, and only the Senate can convict and remove, and only by a two-thirds supermajority.

The grounds are narrow: treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, a deliberately old phrase meaning serious abuses of public trust, not ordinary crimes. It applies to the president, judges, and other federal officers.

In American history three presidents have been impeached by the House, Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Donald Trump twice, in 2019 and 2021. None was convicted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before the House could vote, seeing that conviction was certain.

Origin

From a Latin root meaning to fetter or ensnare; the formal charging of an official, not the removal.

Why it matters

Impeachment is the republic's constitutional emergency brake, the way the people's representatives can remove an official who cannot be checked any other way. That the bar for conviction is so high, a two-thirds Senate, means it almost never ends in removal. It is meant to be the rarest of remedies, reserved for the gravest of abuses.