Framer veneration is not the justification for attending to The Federalist. This is not merely because they are Hamilton’s thoughts. Both sets of papers are highly instructive concerning the scope, meaning, use, and original understanding of the impeachment power. He then returned to the power of impeachment in The Federalist 79 and 81 in discussing the existence of checks against abuse specifically of the judicial power. Alexander Hamilton, writing as Publius, specifically addressed the power of impeachment in The Federalist 65 and 66. The place to begin, as usual, is The Federalist – the single best exposition of the Constitution’s provisions and (usually) a reasonably reliable indicator of the document’s original meaning. Today, I take up the confirming evidence for such a broad understanding in the ratification writings and ratification-convention debates. In my most recent posts, I set forth the evidence from English legal history and from the records of the Constitutional Convention supporting a broad understanding of the Constitution’s impeachment standard, “high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” as a matter of the original public meaning of the words of the text.
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