John Dickinson Quotes
The Executive should be able to be removed from office by the national Legislature, on the Petition of seven States.
Seven states was then a majority of the states.
John Dickinson, 1732-1808, Member of the Continental Congress, Delaware Delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Debate, Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, 1787, Quoted in the Notes of Rufus King
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The issue of impeachment and termination of the executive also found little agreement.
Parliament had developed a formal mechanism of removing officials in extreme circumstances. It was borrowed for the U. S. Constitution. See {584256}.
A veto power for the President would be absurd because
Randolph was one of the delegates who opposed a Presidency of a single man.
Mason’s view prevailed. What is interesting is that Mason saw the State as the State Legislature as opposed to the people of the state directly voting for the Senators as we do today.
The debate was about the unlimited pardon power of the President. Madison argued that the check was the impeachment power. However, Presidents had tended to make large numbers of pardons just before they leave office so the impeachment power works only as a check for the beginning and middle part of their term.
Senator Grimes thought that Andrew Johnson was a terrible President, but when the House of Representatives impeached President Johnson and he was tried before the Senate, Grimes voted for acquittal. His reason for the his vote was he thought that the Constitution did not provide for the removal if a President just because he has “Unacceptable.” Johnson survived removal from office by a single vote and had Grimes not been so principled about the Constitution, Johnson would have been removed from office. On the other hand, Johnson was a terrible President and many of the nations racial problems in later years emanated from his actions and inactions while in office.
In the 1952 steel seizure case the justice department took the position that the President's actions were not reviewable by the courts. The judge ruled against Baldridge and the government.
Wilson was one of the group that opposed a triumvirate or multiple executive. He led the argument that unless there was a single Executive, no one could be held responsible.
The Islandic impeachment process requires that the voters make the final decision as to the charges against the President. However, unlike some American “recall” states, the voters may not initiate a plebiscite; it must be initiated by the legislature with a ¾ majority.
John Dickinson, a Founding Father of the United States, was a solicitor and politician from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Wilmington, Delaware, known as the "Penman of the Revolution" for his twelve Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania, published individually in 1767 and 1768. As a member of the First Continental Congress, where he was a signee to the Continental Association, Dickinson drafted most of the 1774 Petition to the King, and then, as a member of the Second Continental Congress, wrote the 1775 Olive Branch Petition. When these two attempts to negotiate with King George III of Great Britain failed, Dickinson reworked Thomas Jefferson's language and wrote the final draft of the 1775 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. When Congress then decided to seek independence from Great Britain, Dickinson served on the committee that wrote the Model Treaty, and then wrote the first draft of the 1776–1777 Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.
