Constitutional Foundations and Congressional Powers

There is literally a list of the things Congress is supposed to be able to do, and we've thought about it before. In Article I, Section 8, we find the enumerated powers, but that isn't the only place in the first article where a person can find some congressional power or another. Actually, one of Congress's most powerful checks on the executive branch is described in both Articles I and II. For now, we want to focus mainly on the Article I passages that empower Congress to go as far as removing a member of government from their elected or appointed position and disqualifying them from ever holding office again. We've seen the power used only about two dozen times and only four times against three presidents.

As we've come to learn, though, the Constitution isn't terribly specific in many instances, and time and tradition have left us with a legislative branch we might not recognize if we were, say, James Madison or Thomas Jefferson.

Here, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D - CA 12) prepares the articles of impeachment leveled against Pres. Trump in January 2021. The Constitution empowers the House to handle the first part, technically impeachment itself, before the Senate conducts something like a trial. Because the chambers each get to make procedural rules, most of the impeachment process has been ironed out over the years since 1799, when Tennessee's own William Blount was impeached and removed from the Senate--the first and only time impeachment has been used to get rid of a member of Congress. It turns out that, if we look a little closer, there's another way for members to punish members, even expel them from Congress. Impeachment is only used against presidents (very rarely) and federal judges (only a little more often). The Constitution gives the House and the Senate the prerogative to censure a member if chamber leadership and the chamber-at-large agree it's necessary.