To End a Presidency

June 15, 2018

Tribe (Carl M. Loeb Univ. Professor & constitutional law, Harvard Univ.) has again partnered with constitutional lawyer Matz (they previously collaborated on Uncertain Justice) to provide a legal analysis of the power of impeachment. Perhaps now more than ever, the United States is grappling at the question of when and how an American president can be removed from office, and this duo works to provide the historical and political backgrounds of the process. While impeachment became part of the political system as a way of providing a check on executive power, impeaching a president, as the authors posit, will likely result in significant national trauma. The authors focus on three aspects to consider regarding impeachment--is removal permissible, is removal likely to succeed, and is removal worth the cost to the nation? Tribe and Matz bridge the gap between the legal and political considerations of impeachment, shedding new light on an often discussed but little researched topic of civil discourse. VERDICT Timely and well researched, this will appeal to readers who have been clamoring for political science titles.--Mattie Cook, Flat River Community Lib., MI

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2018
Before Trump's first year in office ended, there were already calls for impeachment, and they weren't all coming from the hard left. Constitutional scholars and coauthors (Uncertain Justice, 2014) Tribe and Matz make clear their personal and political objections to the forty-fifth president. But this is no brief for his impeachment. Rather, it is a sober and systematic examination of the historical origin, varying definitions, and specific attempts to impeach American presidents. The roots of impeachment are found in British parliamentary custom, and the Constitution cites treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors as grounds for its implementation. No president has been charged with treason or bribery, and, as the authors illustrate, high crimes and misdemeanors can be open to interpretation. So impeachment has always been a political rather than a criminal process. Furthermore, they show that the right of Congress to impeach does not compel it to do so. Tribe and Matz provide a fair, balanced, and relevant examination of an often misunderstood function of our national government.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)