"Impeachment is not a remedy for private wrongs; it's a method of removing someone whose continued presence in office would cause grave danger to the nation"
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Ruff’s line doesn’t just define impeachment; it fences it in. As a lawyer, he’s drawing a bright, almost prosecutorial boundary between two kinds of injury: the personal and the national. “Private wrongs” is doing heavy work here, shrinking the lurid, tabloid-friendly aspects of scandal into something legally incidental. The real target, he insists, is institutional hazard: a president (or official) whose staying put becomes a threat multiplier.
The phrasing is strategic. “Not a remedy” casts impeachment as the wrong tool for catharsis or moral payback, a rebuttal to the public’s appetite for punishment. Then he pivots to “a method of removing,” a utilitarian frame that treats impeachment less like a trial about guilt and more like a constitutional fire escape. The subtext is a warning to Congress and the media: if you sell impeachment as vengeance for bad behavior, you cheapen it; if you argue it as risk management, you can justify it without sounding partisan.
Context matters because Ruff was speaking in the late-1990s Clinton era, when the cultural argument turned on whether sexual misconduct and deception were impeachable. His formulation is a pressure valve for a country choking on scandal: yes, wrongdoing can be real, but impeachment is calibrated for a different question - not “Did he sin?” but “Can the republic safely keep him?” It’s legal minimalism with a political edge, aimed at de-dramatizing outrage while elevating the stakes to “grave danger,” the only level of threat that can plausibly warrant tearing at the constitutional fabric.
The phrasing is strategic. “Not a remedy” casts impeachment as the wrong tool for catharsis or moral payback, a rebuttal to the public’s appetite for punishment. Then he pivots to “a method of removing,” a utilitarian frame that treats impeachment less like a trial about guilt and more like a constitutional fire escape. The subtext is a warning to Congress and the media: if you sell impeachment as vengeance for bad behavior, you cheapen it; if you argue it as risk management, you can justify it without sounding partisan.
Context matters because Ruff was speaking in the late-1990s Clinton era, when the cultural argument turned on whether sexual misconduct and deception were impeachable. His formulation is a pressure valve for a country choking on scandal: yes, wrongdoing can be real, but impeachment is calibrated for a different question - not “Did he sin?” but “Can the republic safely keep him?” It’s legal minimalism with a political edge, aimed at de-dramatizing outrage while elevating the stakes to “grave danger,” the only level of threat that can plausibly warrant tearing at the constitutional fabric.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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