Quora answer from Dec. 20, 2019 by Lee Thé, retired journalist 50 years experience, BA in Sociology from UCLA
The Constitution achieves its extremely compact size by providing a framework for governance that’s long on principles but short on details.
Ever since the GOP chose to abandon the norms, the practices that had filled in the needed details, and instead chose to do whatever it would take to maintain minority rule over America, the Democrats have been slowly realizing that by observing those norms and practices they’re bringing padded boxing gloves to a knife fight.
Speaker Pelosi realizes this. The Republicans electing a convicted con artist as President has forced this realization on many Democrats.
She’s playing hardball, and the Republicans are clutching their pearls, talking about the Constitution—that they’ve shown zero respect for—and the very norms that they routinely violate.
Just as the framers of the Constitution expected the Senate to advise and consent on any and every nomination the President made, but didn’t think they needed to make an explicit requirement to do so with appropriate sanctions for not doing so…and then Moscow Mitch let us all know that as long as the Republicans had 51 votes in the Senate no Democratic President’s nominations to any federal court would be considered.
That flagrantly violated the spirit of the Constitution and the intent of the Framers, but it wasn’t explicitly forbidden.
Well, guess what: same goes for this situation. The Framers meant for the House to promptly convey articles of impeachment to the Senate, but didn’t explicitly require it.
Contrary to what the always blissfully self-confident right wing Quora answerers write here, the Constitution doesn’t say when Speaker Pelosi has to cough them up.
But unlike the always blissfully self-confident right wing Quora answerers, liberals like me do what any true conservative (as opposed to a neofascist reactionary ethnonationalist) would do and consult experts on constitutional law.
Like Harvard Law professor Noah Feldman: “The House must actually send the articles and send managers to the Senate to prosecute the impeachment. And the Senate must actually hold a trial.” But when the House does that is up to the House, and the Senate can’t move on it until the House does.
Trump Isn’t Impeached Until the House Tells the Senate
Well now. The problem the House has is that the Senate leadership has brazenly stated that they won’t hold a trial. A trial without witnesses and documents isn’t a trial. It would be a Ritual of Exoneration. Moscow Mitch has already declared that he will violate the oath every Senator has to swear in order to be impaneled.
But here again the Framers could not imagine a Senator like Moscow Mitch. And because he’s outside their wildest nightmares of misrule, they didn’t codify explicit rules and sanctions in the Constitution that would require the behavior Moscow Mitch sneers at.
No trial, no Articles.
Karma’s a bitch, huh?
The Mind-Dumpster 