Essays on Impeachment

Introduction

Watergate was a controversial scandal that rocked the USA in the 1970s, following a burglary attempt at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters located in Watergate Office Complex in Washington D.C. and the alleged involvement of the then US president Richard Nixon in the cover-up. The Watergate scandal marked a historic significance in the US politics as it showed how politicians abused their power to get what they desired. The Watergate scandal brought to the surface an array of secret and illegal activities conducted by the members of the Nixon administration. These activities involved the adoption of unethical means ...

This paper will look into the impeachment of Bill Clinton. This move was instigated by the (HoR) House of Representatives because of two charges which were perjury and the hindrance of justice. These charges arose from his adulterous acts with Monica Lewinsky who was a former intern in the White House and several charges of sexual harassment. This move changed a lot on the issue of presidency. It went on to show that the presidency could be overturned. He was acquitted of the charges by the house of Senate on February 1999 (Washingtonpost.com: Clinton Accused, 1999). This paper will ...

In American politics, the association between Congress and the President has been, as one would expect where there is a division of powers, challenging. The Founding Fathers developed a system of checks and balances as the foundation on which the States ratified the American Constitution. As a result, and with one branch of the government writing laws and determining budgets that another branch has to execute and spend respectively, an inherent tension has defined the American government. Now, every President seeks to influence policies. After elections, a country’s President is at liberty to bring his or her goals ...

Abstract

Forensic Science has long found important application in a criminal investigation, and its correct usage will enhance its effectiveness in crime detection. The use of forensic science in intelligence has allowed the possibility of crime scene reconstruction, identification of a suspect and the elements therein. Law enforcement has gone a notch higher in crime investigation in the sense that scouring for limited evidence at crime scenes has been made possible long after the perfect crime has taken place. The sole purpose of finding the obscure evidence is to have the criminals responsible brought to book and as a result, ...

Introduction

American founding fathers were brave, noble and great as they pioneered the drafting of the America Constitution. America government has over the years suffered from a series of problems that proves the need for a new constitution. There is the urgent need for amending the constitution while maintaining its legal, ethical, and moral structure. Over 224 years since the ratification of the America Constitution, several amendments have emerged, and only 27 of these changes were approved and included in the constitution. Depending on the challenges faced in the 21st century ranging from corruption and poor leadership the constitution should ...

In this paper we will be dealing with the important contemporary issue which consists in correlation between the social media activity and civil society as well as radical movements’ response to it. The accent will be put on such informational giants as Facebook and Twitter as well as concrete individuals, who use these resources in order to reach their own goals. We are aimed at answering the question what role of social media is. Additionally, social media will be looked through a prism of current political debates and primaries, threat of terrorism and certain other phenomena. The issue of ...

The federal court system of the United States has been divided into 94 federal judicial districts in order to efficiently dispense federal justice. The physical extent of the powers of each judiciary is not necessarily bound by state borders or borders of any specific kind, but is decided by Congress (“Court Role and Structure”). For example, the District of Wyoming has jurisdiction over all of Yellowstone National Park, including the areas of the park that are located in Montana and Idaho. Another example is that of New Jersey, where the physical extent of the jurisdiction includes Camden, Newark, and ...

The Greeks believed that a tragic hero was chosen to suffer a downfall typically following great success. Many philosophers have defined the characters of such a hero, including Aristotle, Hegel and Nietzsche. Many modern day individuals, including actors, politicians and rock starts can be and have been tragic heroes. Marilyn Monroe, Bill Clinton and Axl Rose each have tragic hero characteristics. Aristotle’s tragic hero is a person we tend to pity and fear. The hero is one who Marilyn Monroe reflects Aristotle’s elements of tragedy. Marilyn Monroe was “an iconic figure of Hollywood glamour and fashion”. Yet, ...

President Bill Clinton carries the dubious distinction of being one among the three presidents of the United States who have faced impeachment proceedings. Bill Clinton, the forty second president of the United States assumed office in 1992 for his first term and was subsequently re-elected in 1996. Before vying for the presidency in 1992, President Clinton had served as a governor of the state of Arkansas in 1978 when aged thirty two; he was the youngest governor in the United States. This background information is particularly important as it was some of the ‘crimes’ that he allegedly committed while governor ...

The Virginia plan was drafted on May 29, 1789 as a proposal for the government structure by Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph. The plan was written by James Madson, which traced broadly, what later came to be the United States constitution. On the other hand, The New Jersey Plan was a proposal created by the New Jersey delegate William Peterson that suggested a system of election of the executives and a national legislature. The rational in the New Jersey plan was to establish an unbiased system of selection of state representatives to a centralized legislature.

The Virginia Plan proposed creation of a Federal system of ...

President William Jefferson Bill Clinton appeared before the Senate on the 7th January 1999 to face an impeachment trial upon charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. He was the second president of the United States to face such impeachment charges. The trial began in the Senate presided over by the Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The trial started with the swearing in by the Chief Justice and the reading of the charges against President Clinton before the 100 senators. The opposing sides went and deliberated on who would present their evidence and considered the question as to whether to ...

The Office of the Independent Council (OIC) was tasked with the responsibility of producing substantial and credible evidence that would be used by the prosecution and Congress to impeach the president. From the beginning, the case against the president was weak. However, when it was revealed that Monica Lewinsky was interfering with witnesses and that she was prepared to give false witness under oath, the case gained some weight. The major arguments made by the persecution include the following. There was evidence that Clinton had spoken to Lewinsky about being subpoenaed to give evidence in the Jones case. Furthermore, a ‘ ...

The American constitution grants the Congress the authority to make laws. A proposed law only becomes law after the approval of the senate and the House of Representatives. The creators of Congress ensured the body has more important powers than the Executive and the Supreme Court. Congress contains checks and balances to avoid the issue of absolute power on one branch and this led to the creation of the Senate and the House of Representatives (Haas, 2009). Congress has the empowerment of the constitution. Section 1 of the constitution state that all, “legislative powers vest in the Congress of ...

Introduction

The debate on the adequacy and sufficiency of presidential versus parliamentary systems has been raging since the fall of the Soviet Union and its communist ideals. Academicians, scholars, and politicians from diverse parts of the world are deeply stratified by the two democratic systems, with each side professing more benefits than the other. The choice of a democratic system for a nation depends on varying factors such as their culture, history, demographic characteristics, and composition of the population (O’Neil, 2012). While each democratic system has its own merits and demerits, I personally think that the presidential system is better at ...

The main arguments that the President of the United States has turned into an imperial presidency include the understanding that while staff numbers continue increasing, most people take up appointments. This is especially with reference to those individuals with personal loyalty to people at office of president and not eligible to the approval or control from external sources outside. A comprehensive scope of drastic advisory bodies emerged around presidency while most of them complemented the lead cabinet functions with cabinet facing a decline in its level of influence. Vivid examples of this include Office of Management, Budget, and National Security ...

Structure

Both the Virginia and New Jersey Plans are similar in terms of proposing a federal government for the United States (US) divided into the executive, legislative and judicial branches. However, both the Virginia and New Jersey Plans differ from one another in terms of power distribution. Greater legislative power is promoted by the Virginia Plan, which plans to delegate executive and judicial appointments to the legislature. Proponents of the New Jersey Plan, however, recommended a more balanced power distribution by enabling the legislature to appoint officials to the executive branch, which in turn would appoint officials to the judiciary. Moreover, both ...

Virginia and New Jersey Plans

Virginia Plan

The Virginia Plan recommended a National Legislature consisting two branches. That the members to constitute the first branch be elected by the people for a term of three years, that those members be disqualified from taking up other state offices or any offices under the authority of the United States that were not related to their legislative functions and the ban be extended to one year after the expiry of their legislative term. The second legislative branch be chosen by individual legislatures, occupants be of the age of 30 years and above, and serve in their legislative capacities for a ...

Structural Differences

Both the Virginia and the New Jersey Plans advocated for a tripartite branch division of the federal government of the United States (US) – executive, legislative and judicial. However, the Virginia and the New Jersey Plans differed from one another in the foregoing aspect. The Virginia Plan, presenting a more powerful legislative branch, outlined a plan to appoint people in the executive and judicial branches through motions authorized by the legislature. The New Jersey Plan, on the other hand, suggested that the legislature arrange executive appointments and the executive branch select judicial appointments, particularly the Supreme Court justices. The proposed legislative structures ...

Richard Nixon became the 37th president of United States of America after the presidential elections of 1968. He successfully served his first term as president and was reelected overwhelmingly into office in 1972. He, however, did not complete his second term in office due to allegations of involvement in Watergate scandal. He resigned as the president of US on August 9, 1974 after the Judiciary Committee had recommended his impeachment to the Congress over Watergate Scandal (Vile 30). Before Nixon became president, he served as the vice president during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency between 1953 and 1961. In 1960, ...

For nearly ten years the Articles of the Confederation had been in effect as the first agreement among the thirteen States since their independence from Britain. After that, it became evident that a new document for dictating how the new country should be organized had to be made. It was James Madison who presented a draft for a new government structure, aimed to give more power to a federal authority. The coalition that backed this draft was formed mostly by people from the State of Virginia, so it came to be known as the Virginia Plan. The most important feature of this ...

Please pick one change you would like to make to the constitution, draft an amendment and explain why your amendment will be beneficial The clause that excludes all people who do not have a United States born parent or who do not have the so-named natural born Americans bothers me a great deal. This status is one of the requirements that an individual has to meet before running for the presidency in the country. The eligibility requirements are set for two offices, the president and vice president’s office. However, the constitution does not classify the natural born citizen phrase ...

Introduction

The principle of democracy and promoting the rule of law are two aspects modern constitutions seek to achieve, whether at state or federal level. Democracy connotes majority consensus on the part of the citizens in defining and shaping key issues. It would be inaccurate to assume that the American constitution is inherently democratic (pure democracy for that matter). Essentially, elections are carried out by the majority of the citizenry who choose officials (Chiappinelli, 2007). These officials are given the responsibility of determining the country’s direction. This way, democracy is transformed from the determination of many to where few ...

The president who succeeded Abraham Lincoln was Andrew Johnson as the president of the United States. After his was swearing in as president, he faced the issue of how to handle the defeated confederate states that supported slavery. There were radical republicans who were against granting black slaves rights to education, to vote and rights to own property. Johnson’s greatest concern was Abraham`s postwar policy. Andrew faced an imminent impeachment when he fired the secretary of war. Lyndon Johnson succeeded john F. Kennedy as the 37th president; Lyndon was faced with the challenge of providing continued stability ...

Most Important Institution in U.S. politics- The Congress

Introduction

After the weak parliamentary rule failed under the AOC (Articles of Confederation), Framers of the United States Constitution was set out for creating a federal system of strong but limited central government. While many architects of the Constitution had agreed upon the need for having a more rigid national government, much to the debate of the Constitutional Convention that revolved around the how strong the government needs to be in comparison to the previously established state governments (princeton.edu). It is certain, that the founders planned Congress to be more powerful in comparison to the Supreme ...

The way the media approaches Benghazi scandal brought a lot of controversy where different media stations offered different versions of the incident causing conflicts and a clash of information. The different media stations offered different reasons for the attack leading to the failure and lose of track by the news media as a channel of communication. The media there focused more on partisan issues and concerns as well as aspects of entertaining the public forgetting their main role of being a gatekeeper of information. This therefore turned the scandal a political issue of the America leadership by presenting and criticizing the statements of various ...

The research concerning the immunity of the president and the vice president against criminal proceedings while in the office started to gain relevance from 1973. The impeachment clause allowed the legal officers to be prosecuted for their war crimes while still in office but the initial interpretation excluded the president from such proceedings. However, after a while, the clause was revisited and it revealed that the president should not have immunity for such war acts. The former interpretation of the clause indicated that the term “nevertheless” meant that the president could be impeached but criminal proceedings against him would not ...

Checks and balances is a strategy that is sued in ensuring that a commissioned body does what it is supposed to do and in the manner in which the task is supposed to be done. With this regard, the arms of government in the US are subject to checks and balances. The US Constitution provides for three arms of government. Each of these has a system of checks and balances. Below is a discussion on two of these. There is the legislature. As per the constitution, the legislature has two components; the senate and the House of Representatives. It is charged with ...

During June, 1787 thirteen states of the Confederate in America came together to form the federal government of United States. Virginia and New Jersey plans were presented at the Constitutional Convention to discuss the roles of National Legislature, Executive and Judiciary in the United States Congress. While the Virginia plan details out the structure of the federal government, New Jersey plan talks about the powers of the government. Virginia plan is clearer in the number, mode of election of representatives and their roles. Virginia plan has information about three branches of government at federal level- Legislature, Executive and ...

The Articles of the Confederation, as the first agreement among the thirteen States since their independence from Britain, had been in effect for nearly ten years, when it became evident that a new document for dictating how the new country should be organized was necessary. James Madison had been working on a draft for a new government structure, aimed to give more power to a federal authority. This draft came to be known as the Virginia Plan because the main representatives of the coalition behind it were from Virginia. One of its main features was the proportional representation of each State of the ...

Factual Background

The Respondent in this matter, Abel and his friends were indicted with bank robbery in the District Court, with his cohorts pleading guilty to the charge as framed. The respondent however, denied the offence and the matter went for trial whereby one of the cohorts named Ehle agreed to testify against him. The respondent then made known to the court of his intention to discredit the testimony by Ehle by calling a witness named Mills who would testify to the effect that Ehle had admitted to him that he intended to implicate the respondent so as to obtain favorable treatment ...

Paper Due Date

Introduction This paper provides details about Nevada’s legislature and describes various aspects of the legislature including its democratic constraints (the initiative, the referendum, the recall, and affirmation of statutes), as well as its constitutional mandate to meet in alternate years for a period of only 120 days each time. The paper also compares Nevada’s biennial legislature sessions with the methods used in other states and suggests some advantages and disadvantages of the two systems.

Historical Background

According to “The Nevada Legislature: A Brief History” (2011), the state legislature has always met in Carson City, though over time it has ...

Essay outline

The United States government is a model federal government composed of fifty states and one capitol.

The first United States government was composed in 1789 making it one of the earliest governments in a constitutional country.

The legislature The people have the right to elect the leaders that they want to legislative offices. House of Representatives This house is made up of 435 members with voting rights. Each member represents a congressional district.

The judiciary

This is an important department that interprets the law and applies it. The executive The executive is comprised of the president and cabinet secretaries. Challenges The resistance to changes that are brought about by democracy Onset of international bodies that ...

The U.S. Political System The United States of America’s political system is based on the Constitution which was written in 1787. The federal constitutional republic currently consists of 50 states. The core value that the Founders wanted to promote through the constitution was the prevention of the monopoly of power by a party or an individual. Comprising a Preamble, followed by 7 Articles and, presently, 27 Amendments, the Constitution is the premise on which the country’s federal government is based. The US political system is complex as it strives to ensure that the balanced distribution of power and ...

I. What was going on in America during this time (1865-1877) known as "the reconstruction? (1-3 Page) (Talk about Lincolns 10% plan, Charles Sumner,Preston Brooks, Lincolns death, The Reconstruction act, Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, Freedmans Bureau, Birth of the KKK, etc.) There were two Reconstructions in American history, although the first one in 1865-77 ended with restoration of home rule and white supremacy in the South, rather than equal citizenship and voting rights promised in the 14th and 15th Amendments. In fact, it ended in extreme violence, with perhaps 50,000 blacks being murdered when the Ku ...

The impeachment of former United States President Bill Clinton during his second term in 1998 happens to be a tremulous event in the American Political History. On Dec 19, 1998, the House of Representatives impeached President Clinton on two charges, one of obstruction of justice and the other of perjury. These charges on the President were made following the exposé of Lewinsky scandal and the Paula Jones lawsuit. The speech under discussion was delivered by the President after the completion of the impeachment motion.

President Clinton begins the speech with a note of thanks to the members of Democratic caucus and a ...

Constitutional Conflicts between the US Executive and Legislature

The framers of the American constitution created a document which ensured that no dictator would rule the country. The founding fathers guaranteed this by mapping out various the arms of the government. Each arm of the government has its own responsibilities, such that no arm is subservient to the other. However, in an attempt to provide enough checks and balances for the presidency, the constitution creates instances whereby the functions of the president and those of the congress overlap. In such circumstances, the unclear separation of power has led to frequent fights between the congress and the presidency. The overlapping ...

This paper sets out to examine the role of the jury in the United States Criminal Justice system and, more specifically, just how safe are the verdicts that the jury reaches in criminal trials. According to Judge Rebecca Knight (2007), a defendant’s right to a trial by jury was written into the 1776 Constitution and ratified in its later updates. Knight quoted the original Constitution as stating “the ancient mode of trial by jury is one of the best securities of the rights of the people, and ought to remain sacred and inviolable.” As a basic principle, it does seem logical ...

The United States Constitution provides for the impeachment of the President for “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Article II, Section 4) but nowhere defines them. It was based upon this arcane phrase that the House of Representatives voted by a majority to impeach (essentially, to indict) the seventeenth president of the United States, Andrew Johnson. It was now up to the United States Senate to garner the required two-thirds majority to convict him, the penalty for which was removal from office. At the outset, it should be stated that Johnson was impeached because his views as a southern Democrat (although one ...

Impeachment

Impeachment involves the expression of power by the legislature which allows it make formal charges against civil officers of the government committed while executing office duties (David & Janice, 1947). It is similar to indictment in the normal court proceedings. In America, President Andrew Johnson was charged with various cases which would eventually lead to his impeachment. Johnson was charged with high crimes such as firing Secretary of War Stanton. The Tenure of Office Act prevented the president from relieving cabinet members without the senate’s Concurrence. Apart from this crime, Johnson was charged with several other major crimes such ...

Texas constitution is one of the longest constitutions in the country. The constitution had modified seven times and presently 1876 constitution is effectively adopted by state. The documents only provide information related to explicit power permitted to Texas hence it work like a limited document.

Texas constitution contains total 17 articles. Small brief about all the articles are as follow:

Article 1: Bill of Rights – the article is having total 29 sections and talk about power of Texas government and some un-avoidable rights provided to citizens. Article 2: Power of Government – As per article two, all the governments have separate powers and one government can not rule other government. This article talks about equal ...

Principles of Constitution

The baseline information of the constitution principles: Reviewers of this Constitution supposed that the state government was required to be more powerful than the earlier in the writing of confederacy. Concurrently, on the other hand, they were totally suspicious of human temperament along with the propensity for individuals in power for violation of other peoples’ the rights. For that reason, they sought after creation of a government influential enough to administer, however, not so authoritative to threaten peoples’ liberty. The proposal of a legitimate government of an administration having documented set of policy which cannot be breached by itself, one approach ...

Andrew Johnson is a man who, to this day, remains one of the most controversial American political figures to have ever lived. He is often presented as being a man who fought for the rights of his people but in such a way that indicates that he did not fully understand what it was they wanted. For example, he fought for free public education but did not attend school himself (Schroeder-Lein & Zuczek, 2001, p xv). Andrew Johnson is a historical figure with a number of varying portraits which depend, largely, on the historian’s opinion of him. In his various renditions of Johnson’s ...

With the political history of the United States as its organizational framework, "American Nation ‘’ describes the advancement and growth of the United States as the product of the myriad actions, views, and forces of the immense variety of individuals and groups who together comprise of the American people. In broader detailed prose, the book examines the political, social, economic, and cultural developments and growth that have shaped the United States. Below is the summary of the first fourteen chapters of the book ‘’American Nation’’ and the contrast of the past and present historical analogy: According to chapter five ...