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Impeachment: The Constitutional Problems, Enlarged Edition

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It's hard to believe it's been nearly 25 years since Harvard Law Professor Raoul Berger wrote his treatise on impeachment. It was then, in those turbulent years of constitutional crisis, the definitive, stabilizing voice of reason. The rock-solid scholarly research allowed calmer minds to reach beyond the excitement of the moment, and to solemnly deliberate whether the actions of our President constituted "high crimes and misdemeanors" as that phrase was intended by the Constitution.

Today's crisis is no less susceptible to emotional conclusions, absent the foundations of law. Republicans and Democrats alike will form conclusions based upon political expediency, and upon what they perceive the will of the public to be. But those political winds have no place in Professor Berger's analysis. Here you will find the inescapable truth of sound legal research.

I had occasion to dine with both Professor Berger and his friend Archibald Cox some 13 years after the last attempt to impeach a sitting President. We talked about politics, and the law. Politics change from week to week, swirling like the wind. But the law gives us a rock to cling to in the most treacherous of storms. Professor Berger's work remains a rock of reason today.