Talk:Impeachment in the United States

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Impeachment in the United States article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 12 months

The contents of Articles of impeachment was merged into Impeachment in the United States on 19 January 2020. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that location, see its talk page.

The contentious topics procedure applies to this article. This article relates to post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people, a contentious topic.

Editors are advised to familiarise themselves with the contentious topics procedures before editing this page. Editors who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator.

United States Low‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Law Mid‑importance

	Law portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

United States Constitution Low‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States Constitution, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the Constitution of the United States on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.United States ConstitutionWikipedia:WikiProject United States ConstitutionTemplate:WikiProject United States ConstitutionUnited States Constitution
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is about one (or many) thing(s).

Politics: American Low‑importance

	Politics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Politics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of politics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PoliticsWikipedia:WikiProject PoliticsTemplate:WikiProject Politicspolitics
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by American politics task force (assessed as High-importance).

This article has been viewed enough times in a single week to appear in the Top 25 Report 3 times. The weeks in which this happened:

Tip: Anchors are case-sensitive in most browsers.

This article contains broken links to one or more target anchors:

[[Article Two of the United States Constitution#Section 2: Impeachment|Article II, Section 2]]

The anchors may have been removed, renamed, or are no longer valid. Please fix them by following the link above, checking the page history of the target pages, or updating the links.

Remove this template after the problem is fixed | Report an error

Impeachment of president: what if the Chief Justice abstains/is unavailable?

If the chief justice refuses to carry out a task that the justice ordinarily would (e.g. recusal), is in a condition that renders the justice unable to act, or is outright vacant, the understanding is that the most senior associate justice would act in that role.

Are there sources that talk about this in the context of impeachment trial of a president? Analogous to how other impeachments are presided over by either the vice president or the president pro tempore of the Senate. If the vice president won't be chairing over the trial for whatever reason, the president pro tempore fills in the chair role as the substitute.

I bring this up in the context of Trump's second impeachment, of which the trial occurred after he left office. Chief Justice John Roberts declined to participate in this one, and the Senate proceeded with then-president pro tempore Patrick Leahy (with the vice president abstaining as well, just like with the rest of the White House administration deciding to stay out of the matter). Some in the Senate wanted the constitutional clause of the chief justice's role to apply a former president, but the Senate decided that it didn't apply. But some news reporting at the time talked about this as if because the chief justice was absent the role got passed over to the preside pro tempore, which... doesn't sound right? As stated above, if the chief justice is unavailable, it should be the senior associate justice that steps in instead. 2600:1012:A023:670C:1F0:BD8F:F26F:EAAB (talk) 03:01, 26 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Simple majority in the House

The article mentions requirement of a simple majority in the House several times, but does not currently, as far as I can find, quote the Constitutional clause(s) for this. Wcmead3 (talk) 16:03, 25 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]