The other 'Nixon' leaves ultimate responsibility for Trump's removal with Congress

By Joan Biskupic, CNN legal analyst & Supreme Court biographer

Updated 6:02 AM ET, Thu October 24, 2019

Washington (CNN)--President Donald Trump has been trying to avert impeachment, tweeting furiously to influence public opinion and predicting that any legal battle could go all the way up to the US Supreme Court.

But when it comes to the last word on an actual House impeachment and Senate trial, the justices have previously said it will not be theirs. Under the Constitution, the two chambers of Congress have the ultimate power to determine whether a President is removed from office.

Important disputes over Trump documents for various investigations, in Washington and New York, are certainly being heard by federal judges and likely to land before the nine justices. A paradigm of the Supreme Court impact on a president was United States v. Nixon, the 1974 case that forced President Richard Nixon to turn over the Watergate tapes. He eventually resigned rather than face impeachment.

But a different Nixon case stands for the proposition that an actual House of Representatives impeachment or Senate trial would not be settled by the justices.

In the 1993 case of Nixon v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled impeachment "nonjusticiable," that is, a political question. Under the Constitution, Congress bears the responsibility and control for a presidential impeachment.

The determination involved not the former president but US District Court Judge Walter Nixon of Mississippi, who had been impeached and convicted in 1989. He subsequently challenged the Senate procedures used.
....