disqualification remedy to early American thinking about impeachment and the oddity of any suggestion that former officials can never be impeached.[1] Looking to the state constitutions that allowed impeachment but did not expressly address former officials confirms that impeaching former officials was indeed consistent with American legal traditions.[2] And no state constitution expressly prohibited such impeachments.[3] Moreover, the precept that former officials could be impeached was acted upon: in 1781, for instance, the Virginia General Assembly subjected Thomas Jefferson to an impeachment inquiry after he completed his term as governor.[4]
As defined by British and early American practice, the phrase “impeachment” was thus understood as covering former officials. That was the rule on both sides of the Atlantic. Prohibiting former official impeachments would have been a marked departure from common legal usage and tradition—the kind of departure that we might expect to trigger heated debates and considerable writing. But as explained below, there were no such debates and there were no such writings. If anything, the Framers’ deliberations confirm adherence to the tradition they inherited.
Throughout this early period, disqualification was recognized as essential to achieving the core purposes of impeachment. “Especially in an age of long, varied careers, it was very significant that an impeachment conviction said not only ‘get out!’ but added an emphatic and irreversible ‘and stay out!’”[5] Removal alone was not enough to protect the public from corrupt and abusive officials, who might later seek reelection or reappointment—and whose misconduct could create dangerous precedents if not decisively repudiated. Disqualification gave teeth to impeachment. The
