What to think when you're thinking about impeachment: 5 essential reads

( CONVERSATION) If you have a big appetite for politics news, you’re t going to go hungry this week.

substantive part of impeachment trial of President Donald Trump w begins, after Democrats from House of Representatives delivered articles of impeachment to Senate last week and senators, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts, were sworn in.

At Conversation, we’ve followed this story since it began as a whistleblower’s report back in what seems like prehistoric times – last August. We’ve been happy to leave tick-tock reporting to our colleagues in rest of media – this happened and this happened, and n this happened. What we’ve done here is provide you with stories that tell you about things related to impeachment that you don’t see – history, trends, legal implications.

Here are five of those stories to help you make sense of news over coming days and weeks.

Could Senate convict and send President Trump packing – only to have voters return him to White House?

ne of three presidents who previously faced impeachment – Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton – was convicted. ne of m sought reelection after ir trials. Johnson simply chose t to run, while Nixon and Clinton, both in ir second terms, were barred by Constitution (as opposed to some outcome related to being impeached) from running a third time.

But President Trump is alrey running for reelection.

Much of talk among Trump’s Republican defenders has been that impeachment battle is about Democrats forcing Trump from office as a way to undo 2016 election.

But Founders, who debated and wrote rules for impeachment, did t see impeachment solely as a way to remove a president.

Law and ethics scholar

Those purposes, writes Cunningham, were several: “To remind both country and president that he is t above law; to deter abuses of power and to provide a fair and reliable method to resolve suspicions about misconduct.”

You’d think a major congressional investigation that produced buckets of evidence of presidential misfeasance would cause that president’s polling numbers to tank.

t Donald Trump.

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two scholars have studied relationship between hearings into alleged executive branch misconduct and public opinion, and conclude that in most cases – that is, t Trump – “investigations systematically eroded public support for president. Historically, every 20 ditional days of investigative hearings cost president roughly 2.5% in polls.”

But Donald Trump’s popularity among voters has been unusually stable. Kriner and Schickler write that U.S. may have arrived at time when public, and Trump’s allies in Congress, may simply t be moved by kinds of evidence that once caused a president’s approval ratings to decline.

president’s private lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, may be a unique character on national st, but role he played in Ukraine scandal was hardly unique.

For generations,

That gets Congress m. So n re are hearings.

“Central to all of se clashes are attempts by intelligence ncies, president and executive branch to withhold damning information from Congress,” writes Tiefer. “Ar common element is use of civilians to carry out presidential or intelligence ncy ndas.”

Giuliani’s show foreign policy work for Trump in Ukraine is just latest in a series of incidents – Kennedy ministration’s attempted assassination of Cuban leer Fidel Castro, Reagan ministration’s Iran-Contra affair – that presidents have tried to shield from congressional scrutiny.

On Thursday, Jan. 16, United States senators stood in grand Senate chamber and swore an oath to be minister “impartial justice” in impeachment trial of President Trump.

“Senators at an impeachment trial are t equivalent of a jury and y are t held to a juror’s standard of neutrality,” he writes.

Lubet recounts when, during 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton, Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa pleed with Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who was presiding over trial, to stop legislators from calling mselves “jurors.”

Harkin said “ framers of Constitution meant us, Senate, to be something or than a jury.”

Rehnquist agreed.

“ Senate is t simply a jury,” he ruled. “It is a court in this case.”

Rehnquist told House manrs “to refrain from referring to senators as jurors.” y were reafter called “triers of law and fact.”

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