Volume 46, Number 5 · March 18, 1999
The Wounded Constitution
By Ronald Dworkin
How well has the Constitution survived the impeachment ordeal? In the end, neither of the two articles of impeachment that the House had adopted, in a party-line vote, was endorsed even by a majority of senators, let alone by the two thirds necessary to convict the President and remove him from office. Many commentators saw this result as a demonstration of the Constitution's wisdom and power. The New York Times declared that 'Congress has just demonstrated that an impeachment based solely on partisanship cannot succeed under a process that, like the Presidency itself, is founded on so steadfast a rock.' Professor Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School said, in the same newspaper, that 'the impeachment drama will have yielded few heroes—except the Constitution's Framers, whose wisdom that drama will again have vindicated.'
Feature, 2967 words
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