Impeachment

Impeachment is a process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct.

[10][1] In Latin America, which includes almost 40% of the world's presidential systems, ten presidents from seven countries were removed from office by their national legislatures via impeachments or declarations of incapacity between 1978 and 2019.

"[15] Impeachment is provided for in the constitutional laws of many countries including Brazil, France, India, Ireland, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea, and the United States.

Once destooled, a king automatically lost sanctity and honours as he could not exercise royal powers such as being chief administrator, judge, and military commander.

1.079, from 10 April 1950, or "The Law of Impeachment", states that "The crimes defined in this law, even when simply attempted, are subject to the penalty of loss of office, with disqualification for up to five years for the exercise of any public function, to be imposed by the Federal Senate in proceedings against the President of the Republic, Ministers of State, Ministers of the Supreme Federal Tribunal, or the Attorney General."

Following this, two legislative sessions are held to allow for the formulation of a legal opinion by a rapporteur regarding whether or not impeachment proceedings should be initiated and brought to trial in the Senate.

The President is suspended (provisionally removed) from office as soon as the Senate receives and accepts from the Chamber of Deputies the impeachment charges and decides to proceed with a trial.

The entire package is published for each senator before a single plenary session issues a call-out vote, which shall proceed to trial on a simple majority and close the case otherwise.

Despite his resignation, the Senate nonetheless voted to convict him and bar him from holding any office for eight years, due to evidence of bribery and misappropriation.

In 2016, the Chamber of Deputies initiated an impeachment case against President Dilma Rousseff on allegations of budgetary mismanagement, a crime of responsibility under the Constitution.

A motion for investigation, initiated jointly by at least one-fourth of all the legislators charging the Chief Executive with "serious breach of law or dereliction of duty" and refusing to resign, shall first be passed by the council.

In case of a successful impeachment motion a president's constitutional term of five years would be terminated and an election called within 60 days of the vacancy occurring.

During the period of vacancy the presidential powers and duties would be carried out by the speaker of the Croatian Parliament in his/her capacity as Acting President of the Republic.

[25] The Senate also proposed to impeach president Miloš Zeman in 2019 [26] but the Chamber of Deputies did not vote on the issue in time and thus the case did not even proceed to the Court.

From September 1987 to January 1989 applications for family reunification of Tamil refugees from civil war-torn Sri Lanka were put on hold in violation of Danish and International law.

On 22 June 1995, Ninn-Hansen was found guilty of violating paragraph five subsection one of the Danish Ministerial Responsibility Act which says: A minister is punished if he intentionally or through gross negligence neglects the duties incumbent on him under the constitution or legislation in general or according to the nature of his post.

A majority of the judges in that impeachment case voted for former Minister of Justice Erik Ninn-Hansen to receive a suspended sentence of four months with one year of probation.

As a direct result and consequence of this case, the Conservative-led government and Prime Minister at that time Poul Schlüter was forced to step down from power.

On 13 December 2021 former Minister for Immigration and Integration Inger Støjberg was convicted by the special Court of Impeachment of separating asylum seeker families illegally according to Danish and international law and sentenced to 60 days in prison.

[39] Impeachment is controlled by the Oireachtas (parliament) with one house (Dáil or Seanad) preferring a charge and the other directing the ensuing investigation and final vote.

In 1976, after being criticised by a minister, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh resigned "to protect the dignity and independence of the presidency as an institution", although there was no question of impeachment.

If impeached, the president of the Republic is then tried by the Constitutional Court integrated with sixteen citizens older than forty chosen by lot from a list compiled by the Parliament every nine years.

Italian press and political forces made use of the term "impeachment" for the attempt by some members of parliamentary opposition to initiate the procedure provided for in Article 90 against Presidents Francesco Cossiga (1991),[47][48] Giorgio Napolitano (2014)[49][50] and Sergio Mattarella (2018).

[58] Members of government, representatives of the national assembly (Stortinget) and Supreme Court judges can be impeached for criminal offenses tied to their duties and committed in office, according to the Constitution of 1814, §§ 86 and 87.

[59] This event was part of the second stage of the political crisis generated by the confrontation between the Government of Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and the Congress, in which the opposition Popular Force has an absolute majority.

[61] A main difference from U.S. proceedings, however, is that only one third of House members are required to approve the motion to impeach the president (as opposed to a simple majority of those present and voting in their U.S. counterpart).

In Poland, referral to the State Tribunal is used instead of the process of impeachment, which is traditionally used in some other nations as a way of addressing similar allegations against persons holding analogous offices.

[62][circular reference] In 1999, members of the State Duma of Russia, led by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, unsuccessfully attempted to impeach President Boris Yeltsin on charges relating to his role in the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis and launching the First Chechen War (1995–96); efforts to launch impeachment proceedings failed.

However, exceptionally, the impeachment of the President of South Korea needs a two-thirds supermajority of votes among the entire membership of the National Assembly.

[74] Over the centuries, the procedure has been supplemented by other forms of oversight including select committees, confidence motions, and judicial review, while the privilege of peers to trial only in the House of Lords was abolished in 1948 (see Judicial functions of the House of Lords § Trials), and thus impeachment, which has not kept up with modern norms of democracy or procedural fairness, is generally considered obsolete.