Historical and Legal Commentary
End Run Around "High Crimes and Misdemeanors"
The meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors” in the Constitution’s impeachment clause has bedevilled generations of lawyers and politicians, and citizens. An interesting new piece by a Cornell Law Professor, Josh Chavetz, suggests that what is an impeachable offense can be gleaned from another angle — by the comparison between impeachment and assassination. Chafetz starts with…
Read MoreNo Way to Treat a Judge
The current impeachment of Judge G. Thomas Porteous of New Orleans is reopening old wounds of mine. My critique of the Senate process of trying impeachments by committee is up at Huffington Post. Having been through one of these Senate trials by committee, and having closely watched another, I am convinced they shortchange everyone involved,…
Read MoreVirginia Festival of the Book
At noon on Saturday, I’ll be in at the university book store Charlottesville for the Virginia Festival of the Book, on a panel titled “American History: Our Government at Work.” I’ll be talking about the first presidential impeachment, based on my book Impeached. My co-panelists will be: Brian Balogh, of UVA, author of Government Out of Sight, The…
Read MoreThe Benefits of Fellowship
I am halfway through a remarkable opportunity, the Hodson Trust/John Carter Brown Library Fellowship. The grant supported me for two months of research at the library in Providence (where there was a lot less snow than in Maryland!), about Aaron Burr’s conspiracy of 1805-07. The grant also will cover two more months of writing at Washington…
Read MoreThinking About Race
A few factors have combined to make me reflect on race relations in this country, and also to make me hope andwonder if we’re entering a post-racial period. First came Richard Wright’s classic Black Boy, about growing up black in Mississippi in the 1910s and 1920s. If I were better educated, I would have read this book…
Read MorePulitzer Biography Crashes Through
The Washington Post today carries a terrific review of the new biography of Joseph Pulitzer by my friend, James McGrath Morris, a/k/a Jamie. That it’s a great book should be clear from my own review of it, posted on Amazon: “Joseph Pulitzer’s story is a classic American rags-to-riches-to-sellout saga. A Jewish immigrant from Hungary, Pulitzer…
Read MoreJames Wilson's Draft
I have been tickled by the recent identification of records of James Wilson at the Historical Society of Pennsvlvania as an early draft of the Constitution prepared during the Constitutional Convention in the Summer of 1787. I think the find is slightly less electrifying than the initial ballyhoo suggests, but it’s still a great thing. …
Read MoreTreason, American Style
Nattering on about Aaron Burr’s 1807 treason trial this week, I was brought up short by a very simple question: How many treason trials have there been in the United States? I resolved to investigate the question, which yielded the following. The Framers of the Constitution mistrusted treason prosecutions, seeing them as an easily abused tool of political…
Read MoreThings Written Remain
A striking feature of Aaron Burr’s life is the paucity of written material he left behind. For a man who spent 20 years in public life during the nation’s founding, the material left is slim indeed. The Political Correspondence and Papers of Aaron Burr were published in 1983 and constitute only two volumes. By way of…
Read MoreAaron Burr and Goethe — 200 years ago
On January 4, 1810, Aaron Burr met with the poet Johan Goethe in Weimar, Germany. They were rough contemporaries: Goethe was 60; Burr 53. But they were at very different stages in their lives. Goethe was a literary giant in 1810, renowned for The Sorrows of Young Werther, and still producing great poetry as he…
Read More