Yes, but they can ask their representatives to get with the impeaching, who in turn are supposed to represent the public (and I believe *those *can be impeached too ?).
I strongly suspect a positive impeachment verdict involves kicking the former President out of the White House, by force if need be.
That’s kind of my point : a codified system clearly defines the processes that should be followed in this or that eventuality, the penalties for not doing so, everyone knows them in advance etc… Whereas the Westminster system of “Everybody is trusted to understand what is Done and what is Not Done”, when viewed from the outside, looks a bit like winging it and dealing with any infringement ex post facto.
I mean, again, obviously it works. I just have no notion *how *it does :).
The question is then, who follows his orders, and who doesn’t. He can keep going all he wants, but it won’t help him much if no-one is taking his calls.
A U.S. style impeachment is also an ex post facto reaction to previous conduct. You cannot, in the American system, impeach an official simply because you dislike him or because you are afraid he could do something wrong in the future; you have to prove that he committed an impeachable offence in the past.
The point that I am trying to make is: A written constitution is worth only as much as the belief and confidence that the civil service, the armed forces, and the general public have in it. If a government violates the constitution under which it is supposed to operate, then there is little reason to believe it would honour the same constitution’s rules on penalising such violations. The ultimate enforcement mechanism is, in such cases, the refusal of the state apparatus and the general public to comply with the government’s commands. This feeling of constitutional authority is just as present and strong under Britain’s unwritten constitution as it is under America’s written constitution. It was, on the other hand, largely absent in Germany’s interwar system, even though the constitutional document was in itself very clear - people simply didn’t live by it, and that’s why the Weimar system failed.
Exactly. That’s precisely what I’m getting at. The point is: This enforcement mechanism does not presuppose a written constitution; it works just as well under a system of uncodified constitutional conventions as is at work in Britain. A monarch who refused to follow the Prime Minister’s advice, or who refused to give royal assent to bills adopted by Parliament, would very soon find himself in a situation where no-one is taking his calls, just like a U.S. President who ignored a successful impeachment.
It is my understanding that Representatives and Senators cannot be impeached, because they are not “civil Officers of the United States” as required by the constitutional provision on impeachment. Even if they were impeachable officers, it would still be necessary, for impeachment, to demonstrate that the person to be impeached is guilty of “Treason, Bribery, or other High crimes and Misdemeanors”, and a refusal to impeach someone else would not in itself be sufficient for that.
That’s not what ex post facto means. Ex post facto means judging/penalizing someone using rules & penalties that were figured or drafted after the offence was committed. Retroactive, if you prefer.
Since there’s no written constitution or formal ruleset that people in government can consult wrt. what they can or can’t do, and no set of procedures or penalties defined for those who do what everybody *else *understood they couldn’t, any punishment for doing something that is Not Done is, perforce, applied ex post facto.
Here you are confusing the political reaction to a politician’s behaviour with possible criminal proceedings against that person. The two have little to do with each other. If a monarch were to exercise his powers in an unconstitutional way, and the British public were to refuse his acts, this has nothing to with criminal law; it’s merely a matter of constitutional practice. If the monarch were, then, charged with a political crime (e.g. treason) for committing, or attempting to commit, such unconstitutional acts, then that would be an entirely different thing. The crime of treason is, however, well defined in British law, so no ex post facto problems would occur.
And what are exactly the “other high crimes and misdemeanors”?
I’m asking because until recently, the French president could be tried by the parliament in case of “high treason”. But “high treason” wasn’t defined anywhere. And even though it never happened, the scholarly consensus was that “high treason” would be whatever the parliament decide it is, like for instance “his choice of tie colour is just wrong”.
Are you sure the same wouldn’t apply in the USA regarding “other high crimes and misdemeanors”?
Well you would need to change the constitution. To start this process you need to have both chambers voting the proposed change (and then organize either a referendum or a congress to actually approve it). I don’t know since when there hasn’t been a single awowed monarchist in the parliament to even propose such a bill.
Theoretically, it’s not even possible because the constitution states specifically that the republican form of government can’t be changed by a constitutional revision. But if you really wanted to do things properly, you could first propose to remove from the constitution the article stating so.
But anyway, out of my head, I don’t think any of the (numerous) regime changes in France were enacted following the proper rules defined by the previous constitution. There was no revision of the 4th republic constitution. A new constitution was just written down and a referendum organized. Same after WWII when the constitution of the 4th republic was written. The pre-war 3rd republic interrupted by Petain was never restored. And obviously, the 3rd republic wasn’t exactly put in place according to the constitution of the 2nd empire. Which just replaced the 2nd republic constitution after a coup. And so on…
So I guess that if for some reason the population was supporting a restoration of monarchy, we would probably do was we always do : forget about the system previously in place and just implement the new one.
I guess the closest to an attempt to restore the monarchy during the recent decades would have been the monarchist presidential bid during the 70s I mentioned. According to Wikipedia, in 1974, the royalist candidate got 0.17% of the votes. There hasn’t been any since.
Some have said, however, that at some point of his life, De Gaulle envisioned a restoration of the monarchy as a viable option, but I don’t know if it’s true, and if it is, when, and how seriously he actually considered the idea.
There is, indeed, some ambiguity about the precise scope of “high crimes and misdemeanors”, but that is not the same thing as “for whatever reason the Senate desires”. It is perfectly clear in American constitutional law that America is not a parliamentary system, where the parliament can dismiss the executive for any reason whatsoever. If you look at historical practice in impeachment (which is limited: Only 19 cases in more than 200 years, and only eight of them resulted in the removal from office against the official’s will), you’ll see that all of them were based on grave criminal accusations, not simply things such as colour of ties.
It is, at the same time, true that the Supreme Court holds that impeachments are not susceptible to judicial review (Nixon v U.S., 1993). Nonetheless, so far American practice has been very hesitant to make use of this power unless there was really serious misconduct on the impeachee’s part, and it certainly hasn’t been extended to a practice where Congress can fire any official for any reason whatseover.
Impeachment is equivalent to indictment. In the case of a president it is followed by a trail in the Senate with the Chief Justice presiding.
A conviction means that the President is no longer such, it removes him from office, and it replaces him by the next-in-line successor. It is reasonable to assume that conviction may be enforced by police and military, if necessary, and even if it is not written down, the inference is so obvious that there should be no bar to action against a convicted President who did not vacate the premises pronto.
There was no attack on constitutional principles in that episode. Congress has the authority to set the number of justices. Roosevelt proposed that new justices be added when a fitting justice reached a certain age. There’s nothing unconstitutional about such a proposal. The proposal was rejected, but had it been accepted, it would have been come tell in cord with the constitution.
Right, that’s what I heard as well. If the monarch is a reasonable person, they could take charge in a true emergency without needing to get appropriate approvals from the various government departments that ordinarily handle such things. For example, if a zombie apocalypse were to break out in the middle of London, Her Majesty could take charge, authorize the issuance of firearms to civilians, spend a million pounds in Government money to import not-yet-approved-by-the-Ministry-of-Health anti-zombification vaccine from the USA, issue guest worker visas to foreigners with ordinarily-disqualifying criminal convictions but acceptable zombie-fighting skills, and order a quarantine of the half-mile area surrounding Charing Cross without having to get all of the respective department heads, MP’s, petty officials, and whatnot to have their weeks of debate before signing off on the plan.
This idea presumes, however, that the monarch is a reasonable person who will limit their usage of power to those times when it really and truly is called for. This problem, of course, formed a major plot twist in
Star Wars Episode III, when the Chancellor used his emergency powers to do things (e.g. become Emperor) far beyond the intent of those who gave him those powers.
The principles attacked were “Separation of Powers” and “Judicial Review.” It would have given FDR the power to name up to 6 or more justices, ensuring a far more sympathetic court for his New Deal programs. Presidents don’t get to stack the Supreme Court.
The only good thing about a monarch is that it gives the country a national mascot who is the social superior of the prime minister. David Cameron has to bow and scrape and tug his forelock to Queen Betsy every so often, which is good for him. Like the slave who whispers “Remember thou art mortal” into the ear of a general during his triumph.
Other than that it’s a bunch of silliness that could be replaced by tapestries, as Kobal2 helpfully suggested.
Actually a Figure head monarchy is a great idea, and it’s too bad the USA does have one. POTUS wastes a lot of time on 'ribboncutting" ceremonies, funerals, and what not.
If you have a Monarch who is almost powerless (Like ERII) but beloved, she and her family can take all that burden on, allowing the real power to work at running the country.
Actually, Presidents get to appoint as many Justices as vacancies occur. Which might be zero or might be all nine during their Presidential term. That all depends on luck, timing, illness, etc. The check against ideological packing is only the Senate’s refusal to countenance such.
To be sure, with FDR in the White House for 12 years he had an unusually long, and never (?) to be repeated chance to pack the court. And I’d also bet without knowing that his proposed retirement age wasn’t selected entirely at random. :rolleyes:
We could make a change today that says something like “effective Jan 1, 2035 all Justices must retire on their 75th birthday.” That would still mean the President replaces however many age off during his/her term. Which could be zero or could be nine. And nobody today could predict the makeup of the Court then or the ideology of the then-sitting President, so it’s be real hard to make a *rational *argument that enacting this change today would somehow advantage one ideology over another when it takes effect.