Can a President Who Is Reelected After Being Acquitted in One Impeachment Case be Retried by a Subsequent Senate?

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR

Illinois law dean and professor Vikram David Amar considers whether a President who has been impeached and acquitted may, if reelected, be retried by a subsequent Senate. Amar acknowledges that it is unclear whether the Fifth and Sixth Amendments’ criminal procedural protections apply to impeachment proceedings, but he offers two key reasons that re-litigation of impeachment allegations after presidential reelection would be improper.

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Lunon v. Botsford

Court: US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit

Docket: 18-3314

Opinion Date: December 27, 2019

Judge: James B. Loken

Areas of Law: Animal / Dog Law, Civil Rights, Constitutional Law

Plaintiff filed an amended complaint seeking damages under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging that each individual defendant violated his constitutional right to procedural due process under the Fourteenth Amendment when the local animal shelter, after a five-day holding period, put a stray dog up for adoption and spayed the dog before delivering it to the adopting family. Defendants did not know that the stray dog was plaintiff's young German Shepherd, which boasts world champion lineage and had escaped from plaintiff's back yard two weeks earlier. The Eighth Circuit held that the district court failed to devote sufficient attention to whether plaintiff had a protected procedural due process property interest and if so, the nature and extent of that interest. The court agreed with the Supreme Court of Arkansas that affirmative pre-deprivation notice is not constitutionally required in this situation, when an animal shelter holds a stray dog for more than five days and then adopts out and spays the dog after the owner fails to file a claim. The court also held that plaintiff failed to prove that each individual defendant's conduct violated his right to procedural due process. Therefore, the court reversed the district court's order insofar as it denied summary judgment to the individual defendants acting in their individual capacities, remanding with directions.