Posted: 12 February 2021 at 10:36am | IP Logged | 4
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Once more... conviction/removal is automatic and requires a super-majority; disqualification is a later punishment and requires only a simple majority.
If an officer is convicted by two-thirds of Senators present, "such a vote operates automatically and instantaneously to separate the person impeached from office." See U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Amending the Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate when Sitting on Impeachment Trials, 99th Cong., 2nd sess., August 13, 1986, S.Rept. 99-401 (Washington: GPO, 1986), pp. 9-10.
The Senate may then choose to take the additional action to move to disqualify a convicted officer from holding further office, although this step is not required. The Senate has established that a vote to disqualify requires a simple majority voting affirmatively, and not two-thirds as with conviction. See Procedure and Guidelines for Impeachment Trials, pp. 81-82.
The Senate has convicted 8 impeached officers, all federal judges, and disqualified three from holding future office: Judge West H. Humphreys, 1862; Judge Robert W. Archbald, 1913; and Judge G. Thomas Porteous, 2010. See Michael J. Gerhardt, The Federal Impeachment Process: A Constitutional and Historical Analysis, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 200), p. 78; and Congressional Record, vol. 156 (December 8, 2010), p. 19136.
In the Humphreys trial the Senate determined that the issues of removal and disqualification are divisible, 3 HINDS’ PRECEDENTS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES § 2397 (1907), and in the Archbald trial the Senate imposed judgment of disqualification by vote of 39 to 35. 6 CANNON’S PRECEDENTS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES § 512 (1936). During the 1936 trial of Judge Ritter, a parliamentary inquiry as to whether a two-thirds vote or a simple majority vote is required for disqualification was answered by reference to the simple majority vote in the Archbald trial. 3 DESCHLER’S PRECEDENTS ch. 14, § 13.10. The Senate then rejected disqualification of Judge Ritter by vote of 76–0. 80 CONG. REC. 5607 (1936).
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