Credit: Deborah Feingold
On Wednesday, Dec. 4, Noah Feldman, the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, testified before the House Judiciary Committee at a public hearing on the constitutional grounds for impeaching the president.
The hearing, titled “The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment,” featured a panel of four constitutional law experts who will discuss the historical and constitutional basis of impeachment. In addition to Feldman, the witness list included Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan, University of North Carolina School of Law Professor Michael Gerhardt, and Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School.
The House Judiciary Committee is the panel that holds jurisdiction over drafting any article or articles of impeachment. Wednesday’s hearing came in the wake of two weeks of public testimony with current and former administration officials before the House Intelligence Committee. The Intelligence Committee, along with the Foreign Affairs and Oversight and Reform committees, also held weeks of closed-door depositions.
In his prepared statement for the hearing, Feldman outlined why the framers of the Constitution provided for impeachment; what the Constitution means by high crimes and misdemeanors; and how high crimes and misdemeanors applies to President Trump’s alleged conduct.
The Impeachment Inquiry into President Donald J. Trump: Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment
Feldman specializes in constitutional studies, with a particular emphasis on the relationship between law and religion, free speech, constitutional design, and the history of legal theory. He is the author of seven books, including “The Three Lives of James Madison: Genius, Partisan, President” (Random House, 2017); “Cool War: The Future of Global Competition” (Random House, 2013); and “Scorpions: The Battles and Triumphs of FDR’s Great Supreme Court Justices” (Twelve Publishing, 2010). He also co-authored two textbooks with Kathleen Sullivan ’81, former dean of Stanford Law School: “Constitutional Law, Twentieth Edition” (Foundation Press, Fall 2019) and “First Amendment” (Foundation Press, 2016).
As a columnist for Bloomberg Views, Feldman has weighed in on the impeachment hearings and Trump’s abuse of power.