Noah Feldman, Columnist

Why Impeachment Trial Procedures Are So Weak

Senate trials happen so rarely it’s easy to forget what happened last time.

January 24, 2020 at 10:30 AM UTC

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
Photographer: William Philpott/AFP/Getty Images

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If ordinary rules of precedent were being followed, there would be no argument over whether witnesses should be allowed at the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Every single Senate impeachment trial, ever, has had witnesses. The precedent is unanimous.

But the painful truth is that precedent carries much, much less weight in impeachment than it does in other constitutional contexts, whether in Congress or the courts or even within the executive branch itself. That’s unfortunate, because precedent helps make procedures — like how a trial works — fair and legitimate.