Impeachment's Roots Go Back To 14th Century English Law, King Edward III Era

Getting medieval: impeachment's roots go back to 14th-century England. Before the power to hold public officials to account was written into the US constitution it had a long history in English law. The Guardian, Oct. 2, 2019.

From the Watergate investigation that brought down Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern, presidential impeachment inquiries have marked some of the most scandalous moments in modern US history. But the roots of the process – the latest iteration of which started last week when the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump – date back not only to the American constitution, where it is enshrined in law, but to 14th-century England.

The first recorded impeachment – a mechanism by which a legislative body can make charges against a public official – was in 1376 in England by the “Good Parliament”. William, 4th Baron Latimer, who served in the household of the then king, Edward III, was accused of bribery and corruption by the Good Parliament, so called because of its prosecution of the king’s corrupt ministers.



- King Edward III gives Aquitaine to his son Edward, the Black Prince.

Impeachment was used as a way of keeping political figures, particularly royal ministers, in check. A conviction could lead to fines, imprisonment or execution.

“Sometimes it was just for cleaning out mid-level judges or other bad officials,” said Frank Bowman, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Law and author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump. “But the principal constitutional purpose for Great Britain was as a legislative counterweight to royal overreaching and tendencies towards tyranny, and the like.”

He added: “Of course, Great Britain did not impeach kings or queens, the only way you could do that was bloody revolution. But on the other hand, if parliament or the interests that were represented in parliament wanted to push back against some royal policy or tendency from the king or queen to get above themselves they would often do so by striking at the royal ministers.”

Although the British member of parliament Liz Saville-Roberts recently requested to table a motion to impeach the prime minister, Boris Johnson, generally the law is considered redundant in the UK, where there has not been an impeachment case since 1806.
But in America, impeachment lives on as an important part of the US constitution, which states: “The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Impeachment was first enforced in America when it was under British colonial rule.

“Sometimes because royal or proprietary charters actually gave the colonial assemblies impeachment powers, sometimes because the colonists in their assemblies wanted to assume the powers of parliament,” said Bowman. After the ruling British were defeated in the American Revolutionary war, the framers, a group among the patriotic founding fathers, gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 to craft the constitution of the young United States republic. Bowman said all four of the draft plans included impeachment...

More, https://www.theguardian.com/law/2019/oct/03/impeachment-roots-medieval-14th-century-england