The judge in the case last week on grand jury materials addresses whether or not a house vote is required. HJC = House Judiciary Committee
-the manner in which the House has chosen to conduct impeachment inquiries encompasses more than past Presidents and no sound legal or constitutional reason has been presented to distinguish the House's exercise of impeachment authority for a President from the exercise of such authority more generally.
-Indisputably, the House has initiated impeachment inquiries of federal judges without a House resolution "authorizing" the inquiry.
-Even in cases of presidential impeachment, a House resolution has never, in fact, been required to begin an impeachment inquiry. In the case of President Johnson, a resolution "authorizing" HJC "to inquire into the official conduct of Andrew Johnson" was passed after HJC "was already considering the subject."
-In the case of President Nixon, HJC started its investigation well before the House passed a resolution authorizing an impeachment inquiry. See 3 Deschler Ch. 14, 15 (Parliamentarian's Note) (noting that even before "the adoption of" the Nixon impeachment-inquiry resolution, "House Resolution 803," HJC "had been conducting an investigation into the charges of impeachment against President Nixon," such as by "hiring special counsel for the impeachment inquiry").
-In the case of President Clinton, the D.C. Circuit authorized the disclosure of grand jury materials to Congress July 7, 1998, see HJC App., Ex. Q, Order, In re Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan Assoc., Div. No. 94-1 (D.C. Cir. Spec. Div. July 7, 1998) (per curiam), ECF No. 1-18, even though no impeachment resolution had yet been adopted and was not adopted by the House until four months later
-While close scrutiny of the historical record undercuts that justification for the "House resolution" test proposed by Representative Collins, the more significant flaw with this proposal is as follows: while this test may address political legitimacy concerns, which are best resolved in the political arena, no governing law requires this testnot the Constitution, not House Rules, and not Rule 6(e), and so imposing this test would be an impermissible intrusion on the House's constitutional authority both to "determine the rules of its proceedings" under the Rulemaking Clause, U.S. CONST., Art. I, 5, cl. 2, and to exercise "the sole power of Impeachment" under the Impeachment Clause, id. 2, cl. 5. This Court "has no authority to impose," by judicial order, a particular structure on House proceedings.