Forensic History, the Impeachment Fiasco, and Constitutional Discourse

The book under review emerged from a curious and provocative episode in a constitutional fiasco. On 8 December 1998, in an “op-ed” article forThe New York Times and in testimony before the House Committee on the Judiciary, Bruce Ackerman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale Law School, offered a novel argument. If the House were to adopt articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, he insisted, it would acting as a lameduck body exercising its powers in the twilight period between an election of Representatives on 3 November 1998 and the beginning of the new House’s term of office on 3 January 1999. That lameduck House would go out of existence on 3 January; all its pending actions–including any articles of impeachment that it might adopt–would be extinguished with it. To be consistent with the democratic principles enshrined in the Constitution and bolstered by the Twentieth Amendment (ratified in 1933), which adjusted the opening dates of Presidential terms and congressional sessions, Ackerman concluded, the new House should vote again on any articles of impeachment adopted by the lameduck House rather than considering itself bound by that body’s actions. Ackerman’s argument was arresting for two reasons: