Quotes from Laurence H. Tribe

An excess of law inescapably weakens the rule of law.

1) all presidents use power in controversial ways; (2) it is improper to impeach based on mere partisan disagreement; and (3) there are many kinds of misconduct that can justify impeachment.

We should] treat as impeachable those offenses, and only those, that a reasonable man might anticipate would be thought abusive and wrong, without references to partisan politics or differences of opinion on policy.

When we think about "high Crimes and Misdemeanors," we must ask: Will we survive this presidency, and, if we do, what kind of nation will we have become?

As the Framers knew, democracy can fall to charismatic demagogues, would-be monarchs, self-interested kleptocrats, sophisticated criminals, and high-functioning morons.

The vast majority of presidential abuses are properly addressed through normal legal and political checks.

American democracy deals with unpopular or unwise presidents by checking them, balancing them, and running out the clock on their four-year term.

Impeachment should occur when a president's prior misdeeds are so awful in their own right, and so disturbing a signal of future conduct, that allowing the president to remain in office poses a clear danger of grave harm to the constitutional order.

Impeachment is not just another form of political combat; it's an emergency measure meant to save the democratic foundation on which all other politics unfold.

Put differently: (1) Is removal permissible, (2) Is removal likely to succeed, and (3) Is removal worth the price the nation will pay?

the public has grasped that the Constitution demands wrongdoing of a very high order to justify impeachment

If we don't allow presidential impeachment, warned Benjamin Franklin, then the only recourse for abuse of power will be assassination.

Without an impeachment process, presidents could obtain office corruptly and then enjoy the poisonous fruit of their own electoral treachery. Democracy itself might be destroyed.

Many Constitutional Convention delegates also worried that presidents might be tempted to accept foreign bribes and conspire with enemy powers.

use of the word high is revealing. In Britain, high treason involved a crime against the Crown—as distinguished from petit treason, the betrayal of a superior by a subordinate. The Framers knew this and deliberately chose to incorporate the word high as a limitation on impeachable offenses.

The Constitution is well worth fighting for.

in the improbable event that the president attempts to pardon himself for committing federal crimes (which likely would be unlawful), he can't thereby preclude his own impeachment.

Sheldon Adelson, for example, gave more than $53 million to Super PACs, but all eight of the candidates he supported lost.59 Karl Rove, a strategic mastermind who won fame advising George W. Bush, oversaw groups that spent $175 million and still lost twenty-one out of thirty elections.