On Jonathan Turley....
DoughBoy is right in pointing out that Turley is not, strictly speaking, a specialist in constitutional law. I quote from the GW Law School Faculty Directory:
Professor Turley teaches courses on environmental law, environmental criminal law, constitutional criminal procedure, torts, and prison law. He is the founder and director of two
national public interest projects, the Project for Older Prisoners (POPS), which works with various state and federal systems to reform sentencing laws and handles parole cases in a
number of states, and the Environmental Crimes Project, which drafts federal and state legislation in the area of environmental crime. Both projects are unique in the country and have
received significant national attention. Professor Turley s pro bono cases have included gender discrimination actions against the Department of Justice and the representation of the
23 Rocky Flats grand jurors who revealed evidence of a cover-up at a nuclear weapons plant. He serves as a member and drafting reporter to the Environmental Crimes Advisory
Group, which is proposing federal sentencing guidelines for environmental crime.
Of course, it does not follow from this that Professor Turley is a "joke." He is clearly very bright, and he is probably a quick study. What does follow, however, is that there are a lot of people out there with a stronger background specifically in constitutional law.
One such scholar is Cass Sunstein, of the University of Chicago. From that university's Faculty Directory:
Cass Sunstein (J.D., Harvard, 1978) is Professor of Law in Political Science and
specializes in administrative law, constitutional law, and civil liberties. A prolific scholar,
he has authored numerous books and articles including After the Rights Revolution:
Reconceiving the Regulatory State and Constitutional Law.
In a recent article in the Washington Post's Outlook Section, Dr. Sunstein recently covered much the same territory as Professor Turley covered in the piece that Zoltan posted. Sunstein has a somewhat different take, and you might find it interesting to compare the two interpretations. I will only re-post the most relevant passages. The full text, which has been posted here before, can be found at:
search.washingtonpost.com.
The initial draft of the Constitution took the form of resolutions presented before the
30-odd members on June 13. One read that the president could be impeached for
"malpractice, or neglect of duty," and, on July 20, this provision provoked extensive
debate. The notes of Madison, who was representing Virginia, show that three
distinct positions dominated the day's discussion. One extreme view, represented by
Roger Sherman of Connecticut, was that "the National Legislature should have the
power to remove the Executive at pleasure." Charles Pinckney of South Carolina,
Rufus King of Massachusetts and Gouvernor Morris of Pennsylvania opposed, with
Pinckney arguing that the president "ought not to be impeachable whilst in office."
The third position, which ultimately carried the day, was that the president should
be impeachable, but only for a narrow category of abuses of the public trust.
It was George Mason of Virginia who took a lead role in promoting this more
moderate course. He argued that it would be necessary to counter the risk that the
president might obtain his office by corrupting his electors. "Shall that man be
above" justice, he asked, "who can commit the most extensive injustice?" The
possibility of the new president becoming a near-monarch led the key votes--above
all, Morris--to agree that impeachment might be permitted for (in Morris's words)
"corruption & some few other offences." Madison concurred, and Edmund
Randolph of Virginia captured the emerging consensus, favoring impeachment on
the grounds that the executive "will have great opportunitys of abusing his power;
particularly in time of war when the military force, and in some respects the public
money, will be in his hands." The clear trend of the discussion was toward
allowing a narrow impeachment power by which the president could be
removed only for gross abuses of public authority.
To Pinckney's continued protest that the separation of powers should be paramount,
Morris argued that "no one would say that we ought to expose ourselves to the
danger of seeing the first Magistrate in foreign pay without being able to guard
against it by displacing him." At the same time, Morris insisted, "we should
take care to provide some mode that will not make him dependent on the
Legislature." Thus, led by Morris, the framers moved toward a position
that would maintain the separation between president and Congress, but
permit the president to be removed in extreme situations.
A fresh draft of the Constitution's impeachment clause, which emerged two weeks
later on Aug. 6, permitted the president to be impeached, but only for treason,
bribery and corruption (exemplified by the president's securing his office by
unlawful means). With little additional debate, this provision was narrowed on Sept.
4 to "treason and bribery." But a short time later, the delegates took up the
impeachment clause anew. Mason complained that the provision was too
narrow, that "maladministration" should be added, so as to include
"attempts to subvert the Constitution" that would not count as treason or
bribery.
But Madison, the convention's most careful lawyer, insisted that the term
"maladministration" was "so vague" that it would "be equivalent to a
tenure during pleasure of the Senate," which is exactly what the framers were
attempting to avoid. Hence, Mason withdrew "maladministration" and added the
new terms "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors against the State"--later
unanimously changed to, according to Madison, "against the United States" to
"remove ambiguity." The phrase itself was taken from English law, where it
referred to a category of distinctly political offenses against the state.
There is a further wrinkle in the clause's history. On Sept. 10, the entire Constitution
was referred to the Committee on Style and Arrangement. When that committee's
version appeared two days later, the words "against the United States" had been
dropped, probably on the theory that they were redundant, although we have no
direct evidence. It would be astonishing if this change were intended to have a
substantive effect, for the committee had no authority to change the meaning of any
provision, let alone the impeachment clause on which the framers had converged.
The Constitution as a whole, including the impeachment provision, was signed by
the delegates and offered to the nation on Sept. 17.
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