That assumes the Senate majority leader has full support of his caucus. If somme members of caucus are inclined to want to call witnesses, and all of the members of the other caucus want to call witnesses, then it comes down to a vote on a motion to call witnesses.
If there is one thing republicans are stellar at it is keeping their caucus voting in lockstep. It is very rare for a republican to break with the pack. The Tea Party primaried the hell out of republicans who dared step out of line and it worked. They are all too terrified to ever break with the leadership.
Okay, I’ve thought of a good reason in the current case for the SotH to delay sending the articles to the Senate to a particular point in the future. And therefore might have a slight bargaining point with the SMajL.
OTOH, this applies to the current situation and is political so I don’t want to derail this thread by starting a discussion about this.
The short answer is No. The Speaker can’t control anything about the trial. Neither can the Majority Leader - anything he or she promises can be overturned by a majority of the Senate, and there’s nothing either of them can do about it.
The Senate and the House are independent of each other.
If Hypothetical Speaker of the House says “I’m not sending over the articles until Hypothetical Senate Majority Leader promises to run the trial in accordance with X, Y, and Z”, and HSML promises to run the trial in accordance with X, Y, and Z, so HSotH sends over the articles. Then some Senator rises to propose “Resolved: We will run the trial in accordance with X, Y, and Z” and 49 Senators say Aye and 51 say Nay, HSotH is SOL.
Regards,
Shodan
There is nothing hypothetical about your question. But you have the situation reversed. Let me ask it the proper way for you.
Suppose further that the Speaker of the House is a person who is utterly without principles or honor.
Is it proper for the Speaker to demand that the Senate operate under the same biased rules that the House did, and to delay forwarding the articles of impeachment to the Senate unless they agree to do so? Wouldn’t that be considered an abuse of power, a quid pro quo on a massive scale?
Gee, where have we heard those terms before, I wonder.
This is me not taking the bait.
The only thing that truly binds the Senate is the constitution, which has precious little to say about the entire procedure. It is like 4 or 5 lines, if even that. The Senate makes up its own rules after that and therefore can pretty much do whatever it wants if a majority of the Senate agrees. Constitutionally they don’t even need to wait for the articles to be passed over. The speaker of the house has only as much influence as they are given by the rules of the Senate, which the Senate can change with a simple majority.
Bolding mine.
Moderator Warning
engineer_comp_geek has already instructed everyone to stick strictly to the facts of law. Stating that your comments refer to hypothetical individuals when you clearly mean them to refer to real individuals doesn’t get you off the hook, nor does using strikeout to try to sneak in a jab. This is an official warning to both of you.
Further comments of this kind will be subject to a warning.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
nm
Are you sure?
Yes. There are Senate rules in place that require it, but those rules aren’t in the Constitution.
From what I see in the constitution:
6: The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
That’s it. Everything else is up to the Senate to decide on how to handle it.
Some argue that the president is not impeached until the House sends the formal impeachment to the Senate.
I’ve heard that argument. From that article:
Which is hogwash, in my opinion. That, again, isn’t anywhere to be found in the constitution. The only thing the constitution says is that the house has the sole power of impeachment. That’s it. It doesn’t specify that certain hurdles need to be cleared before it is official. The House passed impeachment. The president is impeached. End of story. If ever there was a clear text interpretation of the constitution this would be it.
Again, in my opinion.
No, but it is in the Senate rules which, if I am reading this right, require a 2/3 vote to change (or 3/5).
Possibly. I don’t know much about the standing rules of the Senate and how they can be changed. But the rule on how the rules can be changed might be changeable by a simple majority. I’d have to dig into it.
I agree with you. Article I, Section 2, Statement 5:
The House has the “sole Power of Impeachment”. If it votes affirmatively that a person is impeached, then that person is impeached. End of story.
My link suggests it takes 2/3 (or at least 3/5) vote to change a rule. I would be shocked if it were otherwise and only required a majority vote. If it did rules would be almost meaningless since the majority of the day could just fiddle with the rules at any time to suit themselves. It’d make the Senate deeply dysfunctional.
nm
Check out the “nuclear option.” I believe that does allow for a majority of the Senate to make up whatever rules they want. It used to be tradition and compromise were what kept things from getting too partisan and dysfunctional. Both parties in recent times have invoked the nuclear option.
I’m not seeing that. That article says “agreeing to a rules change resolution requires only a majority vote”.
But the catch is getting the rule change to a vote. Senators can delay the vote by means such as filibustering. Invoking cloture is how you stop the various debates and hold the vote. And invoking cloture requires a two thirds vote.
However, that’s not really useful in this hypothetical situation. If one party wants to delay an impeachment hearing and tries to change the rules to do so and the other party tries to prevent the rules change by filibustering the proposed rules change, then the result will be the impeachment hearing will be delayed by the filibuster. Either way, the first party achieves its goal of delaying the hearing.