Does the One-third Minority Rule Illegitimize Impeachment?
In my opinion, the One-third Minority Rule on initiating cases of impeachment is a fundamentally flawed and undemocratic concept. It is philosophically inconsistent with Majority Rule, which is at the heart of everything the Congress does, from electing its officers to passing the budget, to making laws. People only like it if they don’t like the President or other impeachable officials because they think it will be easier to impeach them. But by exempting impeachment from Majority Rule we are paradoxically devaluing, degrading, or even illegitimizing the process of impeachment itself, thus defeating the stated purpose of 1987′s lowered impeachment initiation threshold. I think it is the principle behind Majority Rule that legitimizes any official act or law in a representative democracy. Official acts or laws ought to be legitimate in both form and substance. For me, legitimate in substance means the act or law does all things necessary and sufficient to achieve its stated purposes. L