On The System Of The United States Impeachment

Impeachment is an important part of American political system, which means the parliament has the right to accuse and trial the officers of the executive and the judiciary who break the law and misconduct. It embodies the principle and spirit of the separation power system in America, and maintains the power in balance. In this thesis, I focus on the origin and development of impeachment, the composing of impeachment offense, the impeachment program and the relationship between impeachment and political struggle. The American impeachment institution came from medieval England. In 14 century, the Commons?status elevated markedly. It presented the change to the Lords as a whole, so the Lords had to trial and pronounced. The impeachment appeared by chance, but it had profound background and political base. The impeachment resulted from the struggle of parliament and royalty. At the same time, it was a kind of practice of parliament judiciary. The impeachment existed more than 400 years in England and experienced four stages of origin, turndown, revival and decline. In the late of 17 century, the English immigrant brought impeachment to the North American colony. The colonial Assemblies used impeachment as weapon to struggle with colonial governors and suzerain for equal station with English parliament. After the independence of America, the impeachment was written into the constitution as part of revolution convention in due form .The congress made use 4 of impeachment to supervise and restrict the Executive and the Judiciary in order to maintain the check and balance system. Impeachment cases in American have some characteristics as staggered rise, less successful cases and more judges being impeachment than president. Impeachable offenses ,which are prescribed in Article II ,section 4 ,are 揟reason, Bribery or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.?Those offenses are all criminal, but in fact, serious misdeeds and mismanagement in or out office are in the scope of impeachment offenses. For the president, he will be impeached for serious behaviors, and the seriousness is emphasized. For the judge, because his tenure is during good behaviors, he must be impeached for misconduct which denigrate his morality and court. The program of impeachment composes two stages of the House of Representatives and the senate, which comes from England too and goes down to today. The judicial committee plays an important role in the program. There are many discusses in the process of accuse and trial. The fundamental systems of America are Federal system, the separation power system and two parties system, so there is close relation between impeachment and political struggle. The impeachment article must be voted separated by two houses, and inevitably be effected by the contradiction between the two parities in congress. Sometimes voting results is decided by their struggle. Evidently, impeachment is a way by which the congress checks the president, so the conflict is inevitably. There were three impeachment cases towards the president in American history which all happened in the period of the president抯 power expanding. The three cases were all failing. Maybe the reason is that the 5...