On the whole, I agree with Professor Hardwick, but I wonder whether we can
turn this subject towards Virginia history.
  Let me sally forth with this question:  should President Thomas Jefferson have properly
been impeached for any of the following causes--1) purchasing the
Louisiana Territory without Constitutional authority, 2) misleading
the public about his actual relationship with Sally Hemmings, or 3)
manipulating the prosecution of his political enemy, his former Vice
President, Aaron Burr?

Harold S. Forsythe

Date sent:              Wed, 27 Mar 2002 11:41:12 -0500
From:                   Kevin Hardwick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject:                Re: "high crimes and misdemeanors"
To:                     [log in to unmask]
Send reply to:          Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
        <[log in to unmask]>

> Please do try to remember the purpose of this list serv!  I subscribe here
> to stay current with developments in Virginia history--if this serv
> becomes simply another forum for exchange of political opinion (one way or
> the other) it loses much of its value to me.  This particular post has at
> best only a tangential relationship to Virginia history.  I don't wish to
> imply that the views discussed below are incorrect, or wrong, or
> objectionable in and of themselves--but surely there are other more
> suitable places to discuss them.
>
> --On Wednesday, March 27, 2002 7:51 AM -0500 Constantine Gutzman
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Malinda Jones writes, "Clinton did not commit any high crimes or
> > misdemeanors in office,
> > regardless of the rabid efforts of his political opponents to tar him
> > with their own sins."  I am not sure which of President Clinton's
> > opponents she believes had committed obstruction of justice, witness
> > tampering, perjury, subornation of perjury, etc.  Jones' appraisal comes
> > at the end of a sequence of events that led one senator (West Virginia
> > Democrat Robert Byrd) to muse that while President Clinton had committed
> > crimes, he could not be removed from office by the Senate for them, and
> > one federal judge (a Clinton apppointee to the bench) to decide that the
> > president had to pay a high-five-digit fine for ... well, what evidently
> > now pass in the Senate for unimpeachable offenses.  President Clinton
> > also agreed, on his last day in office, to surrender his law license for
> > five years as part of a plea bargain with the Office of Special Counsel.
> >
> > List members who would like a fuller background to these developments
> > may wish to consult two notable texts on impeachment published long
> > before "l'affaire Clinton":  Hoffer and Hull, _Impeachment in America,
> > 1635-1805_; and Berger, _Impeachment:  The Constitutional Problems_.
> > Among other things, reading these two books will prepare one to make a
> > well-grounded judgement on the issue what "high crimes and misdemeanors"
> > means -- and thus, to decide whether President Clinton (or President
> > Bush I, President Reagan, President L. Johnson, President F.
> > Roosevelt...) committed any.  The testimony before the Senate Committee
> > on the Judiciary in the Clinton matter on this issue generally drew from
> > these two books -- Democrats and Clinton defenders from Hoffer and Hull,
> > Republicans and Clinton opponents from Berger; Hoffer himself and
> > Stephen Presser (Berger Professor at Northwestern Law and a proponent of
> > Berger's argument, besides a witness for the prosecution in the Senate)
> > later had a spirited exchange on H-LAW, which one can review in the
> > H-LAW archive on the H-NET web site.  Besides those two books, there now
> > are several collections of impeachment-related material drawn from the
> > period since the U.S. Constitution was ratified, and van Tassel, et al.,
> > _Impeachable Offenses:  A Documentary History From 1787 to the Present_
> > is as good as any.  (VA-HIST's own Paul Finkelman is among its editors.)
> >
> > I think that the reason Mr. Bartley referred to "post-Clinton standards"
> > instead of using one of Jones' preferred formulations such as
> > "post-Nixon standards" is that in the Nixon era, the president's
> > office-holding contemporaries judged him deserving of impeachment, while
> > President Clinton's office-holding contemporaries did not reach a
> > similar judgement regarding him.  Bartley seems to believe both men
> > deserved that sanction, and he concludes that a change in the public
> > explains the difference between the fates the two met. Constantine
> > Gutzman
> >
> > To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the
> > instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html
>
>
>
> --
> Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of History, MSC 2001
> James Madison University
> Harrisonburg VA 22807
> Phone:  540/568-6306
> Email:  [log in to unmask]
>
> To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions
> at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html

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