Constitutional law expert and Harvard professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz harshly criticized the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump presented by the Democrats as unconstitutional and damaging to the rule of law in an op-ed in The Hill on Tuesday.
Neither of the two articles – abuse of power and obstruction of Congress – presented by the Democrats “satisfies the express constitutional criteria for impeachment,” as both are not crimes or even mentioned in the Constitution.
This means that the Democrats are placing themselves above the Constitution, he wrote.
Dershowitz argued that both articles of impeachment “are so vague and open-ended that they could be applied in partisan fashion by a majority of the House against almost any president from the opposing party.”
He added this notion is exactly what the framers sought to avoid – a decision to impeach based on “the comparative strength of parties,” rather than on “innocence or guilt.”
Dershowitz stressed that the duty of legislators in the House should be “to support, defend and apply the Constitution as written, not as it can be stretched to fit the actions of an opposition or unpopular president.”
He went on to contend that if the House votes for impeachment on these articles, it should be declared “void,” because as Alexander Hamilton stated in Federalist 78, “no legislative act… contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.”
Dershowitz seems to “forget” a very basic principle of law, taught in early days of a law study and a globally and age-old adopted principle, that judgement happens in accordance to the spirit of the law and not the writing.
The spirit of the US Constitution and the construction (or mechanics if you wish) of the separation of powers is clearly in the interest of creating an equal balance between house, senate and execution, of course to (try to) avoid cases of abuse of power.
The reasoning behind having impeacment as an option to remove a sitting president is to safeguard that this very separation is working as intended. That it is understood and respected (in spirit) by each of the powers.
Dershowitz seems to conveniently forget this and stick to an idea around the need of an existing (provable) crime in order to say that power had been abused.
It puzzles me that highly educated people like Dershowitz, who surely knows this, is willing publicly stand out in front of his country to compromise his own integrity on these basic principles by seemingly approving the current leadership toying with one of the most essential safety measures in one of the best constitutions ever written on this planet.
Makes no sense to me
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