An unbelievably high-powered panel-- Professor Laurence Tribe, Dean Erwin Chemerinksy, and Congressman and Judiciary Committee member Jamie Raskin--take up an incredibly important topic, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors." The three set aside some common misconceptions and agree on important aspects of the constitutional term. They then turn to plow new ground, each opining on what potential offense by the President is the most serious and predicting how the Congress may view differently the Venn diagram of potential impeachable offenses. Finally, they offer their thoughts on whether we are at a moment of constitutional failure, and whether the constitutional scheme is likely to prove equal to the stresses that the President has imposed on it.
Host Harry Litman is joined by:
Professor Laurence Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor and Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. Professor Tribe has prevailed in three-fifths of the many appellate cases he has argued (including 35 in the U.S. Supreme Court); was appointed in 2010 by President Obama and Attorney General Holder to serve as the first Senior Counselor for Access to Justice; and helped write the constitutions of South Africa, the Czech Republic, and the Marshall Islands. His treatise, “American Constitutional Law,” has been cited more than any other legal text since 1950. He has written 115 books and articles, most recently, To End A Presidency: The Power of Impeachment (co-authored with Joshua Matz).
Professor Erwin Chemerinsky is the Dean of Berkeley Law and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law. From 2008-2017, he was the founding Dean and Distinguished Professor of Law at University of California, Irvine School of Law. He is the author of eleven books, including leading casebooks and treatises about constitutional law, criminal procedure, and federal jurisdiction, including We the People: A Progressive Reading of the Constitution for the Twenty-First Century. He frequently argues appellate cases, including in the United States Supreme Court.
Congressman Jamie Raskin, (D-MD 8th District), member of the Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Reform Committee, the House Committee on Rules; and vice chair of both the House Administration Committee and the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. Before entering Congress, Raskin was a three-term state senator in Maryland, where he also served as the Senate majority whip. For more than 25 years, he was a professor of constitutional law at American University's Washington College of Law and authored dozens of law review articles and several books, including the Washington Post best-seller Overruling Democracy: The Supreme Court versus the American People and the highly acclaimed We the Students: Supreme Court Cases For and About America's Students.
