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In the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton, Justice William Rehnquist adopted a ceremonial role. I don't know about the Johnson impeachment; maybe someone out there can fill us in.
The ceremonial role would seem to comport with the constitution, which assigns the power to the Senate:
Quote:
the Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments
. I doubt that Roberts would try for a power grab, which would just pile crisis upon crisis. We already have enough of a crisis with this partisan-driven removal of a duly elected POTUS.
-- Will Roberts ask totally partisan Senators who have stated how they will vote publicly (looking at you Lindsay Graham) to recuse themselves? Senators will take an oath to be impartial jurors. You can't be one if you've already announced how you will vote and won't listen to evidence.
when you say have publicly stated how they will vote....
do you include Democratic Senators Warren, Schumer, Booker, Harris, Warner, Udall who have all said they will vote to convict, even though they have not had the evidence presented to them yet
Roberts is there to oversee trial rules established by the Senate, in this case the GOP Senate majority. He isn't free to do what he wills. And, unlike a leftist justice/judge, he won't be itching to do the opposite of what I wrote.
Roberts is there to oversee trial rules established by the Senate, in this case the GOP Senate majority. He isn't free to do what he wills. And, unlike a leftist justice/judge, he won't be itching to do the opposite of what I wrote.
Also if he attempted to overstep it would be an impeachable offense which would give Trump the chance to name a new Chief Justice after the election.
The Senate is not going to override any decision made by the Supreme Court Chief Justice as the presiding judge of this trial, unless he does something so egregious that Senate Republicans feel compelled to take a stand against him on it. That is not likely to happen at all.
Also, the rules that will be used are expected to be virtually identical to those used in the impeachment trial of Bill Clinton a little over 20 years ago. Those rules, which passed the Senate at that time by a vote of 100-0, included the full range of rights and protections provided to criminal defendants in our criminal courts, and recognized the rights and protections provided by the US Constitution as well.
The Democrats may try to find a way to strip out the due process and other criminal trial related protections that were provided to President Clinton, because they consider President Trump to be "Beneath the law". But that is not politically or rationally feasible. The Republicans are not going to support that, and that will especially be the case since President Clinton enjoyed these protections during his impeachment trial.
As long as the participants in the trial conduct themselves with with integrity, proper respect for the law and the constitution, and with the decorum that would ordinarily be expected by people in this sort of a setting, there should not be too much need for Chief Justice Roberts to intervene. But if this starts going off of the rails, as this entire process has been since its inception, then Roberts will surely move to get it back on again. And the Republicans in the Senate are likely to be appreciate and supportive of his efforts to do that.
No he doesn't, he has no latitude to do anything the Senate majority doesn't agree with.
You're conflating the point. The CJ has a lot of latitude to rule one way or the other. At which point the Senate could vote to overrule. Depending on what the CJ ruled on and his reasoning, it puts McConnell on the spot on how he wants to react. It's not a given that the Senate will automatically overrule Roberts on everything. It's possible Roberts will be a wallflower and hardly say anything at all. There's a wide range of unknowns here and that's what makes it interesting.
The Senate is not going to override any decision made by the Supreme Court Chief Justice as the presiding judge of this trial, unless he does something so egregious that Senate Republicans feel compelled to take a stand against him on it. That is not likely to happen at all.
The reality is that Roberts isn't going to overstep, he's just going to ensure the rules the Senate create are abided by and there will be no drama on that front for several reasons.
You're conflating the point. The CJ has a lot of latitude to rule one way or the other. At which point the Senate could vote to overrule. Depending on what the CJ ruled on and his reasoning, it puts McConnell on the spot on how he wants to react. It's not a given that the Senate will automatically overrule Roberts on everything. It's possible Roberts will be a wallflower and hardly say anything at all.
He has no "latitude", he goes by the rules the Senate set and nothing more. He's not there to tell them who they can call or how they should conduct the trial.
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