The practicality of impeachment
Commentary
The convention has now turned to the suggestion that the executive should be impeachable, but here Madison questions the sensibility of allowing the executive to hold office during good behaviour on the basis that impeachments may be impractical. He suggests that a tribunal for impeachments must be ‘as certain & as adequate in the one case as in the other’.
Although the motion for good behaviour was negatived, questions about how impeachments should be tried would crop up again and cause problems in later discussion.
The Virginia Plan as amended in Committee [Resolutions] - Ninth Resolution (Working Version): Length of Term - McClurg/Morris for Good Behaviour was debated
on 17 July 1787
Approved for publication
None
The practicality of impeachment by Kat Howarth (KatHowarth)
Impeachment and the Convention
Cite as: Kat Howarth, ‘The practicality of impeachment’ in Kat Howarth, Impeachment and the Convention, Quill Project at Pembroke College (Oxford, 2016), item 93.