Page 232 - ILIAS ATHANASIADIS AKA RO1

At the constitutional convention, on July 20, 1787, Edmund Randolph, the

governor of Virginia who had introduced the Virginia plan, stated specifically
that “the propriety of impeachments was a favorite principle with him” because

“the Executive will have great opportunity's of abusing his power.”

In Federalist 65, Alexander Hamilton defined “high crimes and
misdemeanors” as “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of

public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public
trust.”

Dershowitz’s view is so absurd that I don’t know of even one legal scholar who

studies the Constitution who agrees with him.

That includes Dershowitz himself, who in 1998 said (correctly) that
impeachment doesn’t have to be for a crime.

Seeking scholarly support, Dershowitz has repeatedly misrepresented the work

of my colleague, Nikolas Bowie.

Bowie has rejected Dershowitz’s claim, explaining that abuse of power is a
perfectly valid example of a high crime or high misdemeanor.

Dershowitz’s misleading characterization of Bowie’s work derives from an

article in which Bowie argued that high crimes and misdemeanors must be
recognized crimes under either the unwritten common law or under written

statutes.

Abuse of power by government officials was a well-recognized crime under the
common law, as the framers knew.

Dershowitz speciously says that since today’s courts do not recognize federal

common law crimes, abuse of power can’t be impeachable. That’s literally
laughable:

When the framers wrote the Constitution, there were no federal statutory
crimes, because there was no U.S. Code. So according to Dershowitz, the

framers wrote an impeachment provision that did not allow them to impeach

anyone.