Can a US President, after impeachment and removal, be re-elected or re-appointed? This answer in its present form states If Donald Trump were impeached and blocked from running again (which is one of the things that impeachment can do, disqualify from office)... Is that true? Does impeachment by the House of Representatives, with or without subsequent removal from office by the Senate, actually disqualify one from being re-elected to the same Presidential office? Before the present time, this might have seemed politically impossible regardless of the law, but impeachment and even removal from office does not seem as likely to hinder the viability of a candidate supported by the base of voters supporting the current US President. This question is intentionally on Law.SE instead of Politics.SE as the focus is intended to be on law rather than political viability. As an example of a similar case, consider Roy Moore, who in 2001 was elected as Alabama's 27th Chief Justice, removed from office in 2003, was again elected chief justice in 2013, again forced out, then won a Republican primary for Senate in a heavily Republican state, earning Trump's endorsement, and is again a candidate for the US Senate. As a closely related question, does impeachment by the House of Representatives, with or without subsequent removal from office by the Senate, actually disqualify one from being re-appointed as Vice President or elsewhere early in the line of succession, and re-reaching the same Presidential office by resignations or otherwise?
Impeachment of a president does not on conviction automatically disqualify the convicted party from becoming president again. However, after conviction, the Senate can vote to add to the punishment of removal from office "disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States." This requires only a simple majority vote. Does impeachment by the House of Representatives, with or without subsequent removal from office by the Senate, actually disqualify one from being re-elected to the same Presidential office? See above. It requires impeachment by the House, conviction by the Senate, and a separate vote by the Senate to impose the punishment of disqualification. It's conceivable that the Senate could disqualify the convicted party only from becoming president, though it looks like in the two prior instances where this punishment was imposed it was the broader disqualification. But if a person disqualified only from being president is in an office that would normally be in the line of succession, that person is simply omitted from the line of succession. This happens routinely with naturalized citizens, and there's no reason to think it would be any different for a former president who had been disqualified only from the office of the president after being convicted on articles of impeachment.
I think we're talking about In re Hennen, which dealt with the removal of the clerk of the district court in Louisiana: It all these departments power is given to the secretary, to appoint all necessary clerks; 1 Story, 48; and although no power to remove is expressly given, yet there can be no doubt, that these clerks hold their office at the will and discretion of the head of the department. It would be a most extraordinary construction of the law, that all these offices were to be held during life, which must inevitably follow, unless the incumbent was removable at the discretion of the head of the department: the President has certainly no power to remove. These clerks fall under that class of inferior officers, the appointment of which the Constitution authorizes Congress to vest in the head of the department. The same rule, as to the power of removal, must be applied to offices where the appointment is vested in the President alone. The nature of the power, and the control over the officer appointed, does not at all depend on the source from which it emanates. The execution of the power depends upon the authority of law, and not upon the agent who is to administer it. And the Constitution has authorized Congress, in certain cases, to vest this power in the President alone, in the Courts of law, or in the heads of departments; and all inferior officers appointed under each, by authority of law, must hold their office at the discretion of the appointing power. Such is the settled usage and practical construction of the Constitution and laws, under which these offices are held. In re Hennen, 38 U.S. 230, 259–60, 10 L. Ed. 138 (1839) (emphasis added).
No. The relevant provision of the United States Constitution is Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 which states in the pertinent part: The President . . . shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment. The correct conclusion flows pretty directly from the definition of a "reprieve" and a "pardon", both of which, in the ordinary senses of these words refer to granting forgiveness for acts that have already occurred. One of the leading cases on point which supports this view is Ex parte Garland, 59 U.S. (18 How.) 307, 380 (1855), which states: The power thus conferred is unlimited, with the exception stated. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. This power of the President is not subject to legislative control. Congress can neither limit the effect of his pardon, nor exclude from its exercise any class of offenders. The benign prerogative of mercy reposed in him cannot be fettered by any legislative restrictions. Despite its antiquity, this case remains good law and has been applied repeatedly in subsequent cases (although few on the right of a President to pardon future crimes which just hasn't come up). Other Observations The President's pardon power is limited to federal crimes, so no President may pardon or commute a state or foreign conviction. The nature of the pardon power, if any, with respect to state and local crimes is governed by each respective state constitution and varies rather considerably. The power in the U.S. Constitution is broader than that is some state constitutions. For example, the corresponding provision of the Colorado Constitution, applicable to convictions entered by the state of Colorado, does not allow crimes to be pardoned prior to a conviction. Article IV, Section 7, of the Colorado Constitution provides: "The governor shall have the power to grant reprieves, commutations and pardons after conviction, for all offenses except treason * * *." The History Of The Pardon Power One of the most thorough and up to date reviews of the scope and nature of the federal pardon power can be found in the law review article, Todd David Peterson, "Congressional Power Over Pardon and Amnesty: Legislative Authority In The Shadow of Presidential Prerogative" 38 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1225 (2003). In particular, it has an interesting historical overview of the power at pages 1228-1235 (pagination and footnotes omitted): The President's pardon power derives from the authority that had been invested in English kings since the end of the first millennium. Although the King possessed plenary power to grant pardons, over the years Parliament imposed specific limitations on the pardon power in order to avoid perceived abuses. For example, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 made it an offense for any person to imprison an English subject outside of the country and, in order to avoid an evasion of the writ, Parliament prohibited the King from granting a pardon for violation of the statute. Nevertheless, English courts frequently took an absolutist view of the King's pardon power. Thus, in Godden v. Hales, the Lord Chief Justice upheld a royal pardon on the ground that the Kings of England were absolute sovereigns; . . . the laws were the King's laws; . . . the King had a power to dispense with any of the laws of Government as he saw necessity for it; . . . he was sole judge of that necessity; that no act of Parliament could take away that power. The Parliament, however, persisted in its efforts to rein in the pardon power and, in 1700, adopted the Act of Settlement, which stated that "no pardon under the great seal of England [shall] be pleadable to an impeachment by the commons in Parliament." This limitation was enforced against the King, although it did not apply to pardons granted to relieve punishments imposed after the impeachment of an official. The royal pardon prerogative was imported into the American colonies whose charters gave the leaders substantial authority to pardon offenses. At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, neither the Virginia plan nor the New Jersey plan contained a pardon power. Nevertheless, at the insistence of Charles Pinckney, Alexander Hamilton, and John Rutledge, a pardon clause similar to the English Act of Settlement of 1700 was added to the draft constitution. Thus, the first report of the Committee on Detail proposed that the clause read: "He [the President] shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons; but his pardon shall not be pleadable in bar of an impeachment." The issue of legislative control over the pardon process was addressed directly by an amendment proposed by Roger Sherman of Connecticut. James Madison's journal notes that "Mr. Sherman moved to amend the power to grant reprieves and pardon' so as to readto grant reprieves until the ensuing session of the Senate, and pardons with consent of the Senate.'" George Mason argued that the Senate already possessed too much authority, and the proposed amendment was rejected by a vote of eight to one. The convention did approve a motion to insert "except in cases of impeachment" after pardon and remove the words "but his pardon shall not be pleadable in bar." Luther Martin then sought to limit the President's power to grant pre-conviction pardons by inserting the words "after conviction," following the words "reprieves and pardons." Martin, however, withdrew his motion after James Wilson argued that "pardon before conviction might be necessary, in order to obtain the testimony of accomplices." Edmund Randolph then offered an amendment to exclude "cases of treason" from the pardoning power. This proposed amendment was defeated, although its exclusion was later to prove controversial. Thus, although the framers realized that the pardon power was subject to potential abuse by the President, they declined to place any limitations on the President's pardon power or grant the legislature any authority to check potential presidential abuses. The debates following the convention's passage of the Constitution reveal more about the framers' views on the pardon power. In the Federalist 74, Alexander Hamilton attempted to respond to the criticism that the President could pardon his accomplices in a case of treason. Hamilton acknowledged that "there are strong reasons to be assigned for requiring in this particular the concurrence of [the legislative] body or of a part of it." Hamilton argued, however, that the reasons against such legislative authority outweighed any in its favor: "[i]t is not to be doubted that a single man of prudence and good sense, is better fitted, in delicate conjunctures, to balance the motives, which may plead for and against the remission of the punishment, than any numerous body whatever." In particular, Hamilton argued, in the case of large scale seditions that attracted significant popular support, we might expect to see the representation of the people tainted with the same spirit, which had given birth to the offense. And when parties were pretty equally matched, the secret sympathy of the friends and favorers of the condemned person, availing itself of the good nature and weakness of others, might frequently bestow impunity where the terror of an example was necessary. Thus, Hamilton argued not only that the power was properly reposed in the President, but that it would be dangerous to grant such power to Congress. Finally, Hamilton argued that it was appropriate to grant the President pardon power in order to ensure that the authority could be exercised with appropriate dispatch: "In seasons of insurrection or rebellion, there are often critical moments, when a well timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth; and which, if suffered to pass unimproved, it may never be possible afterwards to recall. The dilatory process of convening the Legislature, or one of its branches, for the purpose of obtaining its sanction to the measure, would frequently be the occasion of letting slip the golden opportunity. The loss of a week, a day, an hour, may sometimes be fatal. If it should be observed that a discretionary power with a view to such contingencies might be occasionally conferred upon the President; it may be answered in the first place, that it is questionable whether, in a limited constitution, that power could be delegated by law; and in the second place, that it would generally be impolitic before-hand to take any step which might hold out the prospect of impunity." There was little debate about the pardoning power during the state ratifying conventions. George Mason continued to argue that the power should not be given to the President. An opponent in New York suggested that pardons for treason should not be allowed without congressional consent. Ultimately, the Constitution was adopted without any express limitation on the President's pardoning power. The Supreme Court has on a number of occasions discussed the general scope of the pardoning power. For the most part, with exceptions to be discussed later, these decisions contain broad dicta concerning the unfettered nature of the President's power and the inability of Congress to impose any legislative restrictions on it. For example, in United States v. Wilson, the Court held that a pardon must be pleaded in order to be effective. Chief Justice Marshall wrote that the [C]onstitution gives to the [P]resident, in general terms, "the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offences against the United States." As this power had been exercised from time immemorial by the executive of that nation whose language is our language, and to whose judicial institutions ours bear a close resemblance; we adopt their principles respecting the operation and effect of a pardon, and look into their books for the rules prescribing the manner in which it is to be used by the person who would avail himself of it. Marshall further defined the pardon as an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual, on whom it is bestowed, from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed. It is the private, though official act of the executive magistrate, delivered to the individual for whose benefit it is intended, and not communicated officially to the court. In Ex parte Wells, the Supreme Court considered whether the President could grant a conditional pardon in the form of commutation of a death sentence to a sentence of life imprisonment. The Court noted that pursuant to the Pardon Clause, the President has granted reprieves and pardons since the commencement of the present government. Sundry provisions have been enacted, regulating its exercise for the army and navy, in virtue of the constitutional power of [C]ongress to make rules and regulations for the government of the army and navy. No statute has ever been passed regulating it in cases of conviction by the civil authorities. In such cases, the President has acted exclusively under the power as it is expressed in the [C]onstitution. The Court noted, however, that "[t]here are also pardons grantable as of common right, without any exercise of the king's discretion; as where a statute creating an offence, or enacting penalties for its future punishment, holds out a promise of immunity to accomplices to aid in the conviction of their associates. When accomplices do so voluntarily, they have a right absolutely to a pardon . . . ." Thus, at least in dicta, the Court recognized Congress's authority to regulate clemency in the military and to adopt statutes granting immunity for cooperation in a criminal investigation. In Ex parte Garland, the Court spoke in sweeping dicta about the exclusive power of the President over pardon and amnesty. In Garland, the Court considered the issue whether a former Confederate senator would be permitted to be a member of the Supreme Court Bar without taking the statutorily required oath that he had never voluntarily given aid or comfort to the confederacy. The petitioner had received a presidential pardon and argued that the pardon exempted him from the requirements of the oath to which he could not truthfully subscribe. The Court held that it was "not within the constitutional power of Congress thus to inflict punishment beyond the reach of executive clemency," and therefore, the petitioner was entitled to membership in the Bar. In the course of the opinion, the Court broadly defined the President's pardon power: "The power thus conferred is unlimited, with the exception stated. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. This power of the President is not subject to legislative control. Congress can neither limit the effect of his pardon, nor exclude from its exercise any class of offenders. The benign prerogative of mercy reposed in him cannot be fettered by any legislative restrictions." In Ex parte Grossman, the Court considered whether the President's pardon power extended to criminal contempts of court. The Court upheld the President's power to issue such pardons based on the history of royal pardons for contempt in England. The Court also looked to the long history of presidential pardons of criminal contempts of court. In responding to the argument that a presidential pardon of contempt of court would interfere with the ability of the federal courts to protect their own decrees, Chief Justice Taft noted that the Constitution provides a number of powers to the branches which give them the ability to check the other branches of government. With respect to the pardon power, the Court stated: "[t]he executive can reprieve or pardon all offenses after their commission, either before trial, during trial or after trial, by individuals, or by classes, conditionally or absolutely, and this without modification or regulation by Congress." The Court also noted that the President exercised the pardon power without any significant judicial check on his pardoning authority: "It is a check entrusted to the executive for special cases. To exercise it to the extent of destroying the deterrent effect of judicial punishment would be to pervert it; but whoever is to make it useful must have full discretion to exercise it. Our Constitution confers this discretion on the highest officer in the nation in confidence that he will not abuse it. An abuse in pardoning contempts would certainly embarrass courts, but it is questionable how much more it would lessen their effectiveness than a wholesale pardon of other offenses. If we could conjure up in our minds a President willing to paralyze courts by pardoning all criminal contempts, why not a President ordering a general jail delivery?" In Biddle v. Perovich, Justice Holmes wrote an opinion for the Court in which he upheld the President's conditional pardon of a convict sentenced to death on the condition that his sentence be commuted to life imprisonment. Justice Holmes suggested a different rationale for the pardon power than Chief Justice Marshall had enunciated early in the 19th century. Rather than being a private act of grace that must be accepted and proffered to the court by the one pardoned, Justice Holmes saw the President's pardon as serving public policy ends: "A pardon in our days is not a private act of grace from an individual happening to possess power. It is a part of the Constitutional scheme. When granted it is the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare will be better served by inflicting less than what the judgment fixed. . . . Just as the original punishment would be imposed without regard to the prisoner's consent and in the teeth of his will, whether he liked it or not, the public welfare, not his consent, determines what shall be done."
The US courts (including the US Supreme Court) do not have an army or even a police force under their direct control, except for a few court bailiffs. Ultimately, if the executive simply defies the courts, the only remedy is a political one. A court can order a person held unlawfully to be released from detention, but the jail/prison authorizes might ignore such an order. A court might order DACA applications to be accepted, and if they are not, might rule that deportations or other negative actions are unlawful. A court might hold persons who defy its orders in contempt, and send marshals to jail such persons. But if the executive branch in an organized way defies such orders, there is no judicial power to compel obedience to court orders. This is why the judiciary has famously been called the &quot;least dangerous branch&quot; of the government: it cannot actually do anything without at least the tacit cooperation of the executive. Cherokee Case (Worcester v. Georgia) There was a reference in the comments above to the the Cherokee Indians case, Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515 (1832). In that case the US Supreme Court, in a decision written by Chief Justice Marshall held that the Georgia laws purporting to seize Cherokee lands were invalid as violations of Federal treaties. President Jackson was strongly displeased by this ruling. He was supposed to have said: John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it. It appears that President Jackson probably did not say that, at least not publicly. But in fact Jackson did not take any steps to enforce the decision, and the decision was in fact not enforced. The lands were seized, and the Cherokee were forcibly relocated across the infamous trail of tears. This event shows that a court ruling (proper or improper) may have no effect if the executive branch refuses to obey or enforce it.
Donald Trump did not waive executive privilege: it was denied to him. In Trump Loses Big on Executive Privilege (Thursday, January 20, 2022) the Lawfare Institute says The Supreme Court Wednesday evening denied a motion by former President Trump to block the National Archive from turning White House materials to the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack. The peculiar, four-page order, is a complicated document, but in combination with the broad and underdiscussed D.C. Circuit opinion it leaves in place, it has profound implications for Trump’s ability, and that of his allies, to make executive privilege claims in response to demands for testimony and information from the committee. On its face, the Supreme Court’s order yesterday appears to mitigate the consequences for Trump of a D.C. Circuit opinion that rejects a number of his key claims in resisting the committee. The D.C. Circuit opinion has been hanging around since early last month with little notice or discussion—probably because the Supreme Court was poised to jump in any time. But in fact, the Supreme Court action does not mitigate the matter for Trump. Put simply, the former president, whether he knows it or not, is now in a dramatically weaker position than he was only recently with respect to the committee. The new legal landscape, for example, almost certainly means that two top Trump officials—former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadow and former top adviser Steve Bannon—can no longer argue that the privilege prevents them from cooperating with the committee. The same applies to other potential witnesses, and to the former president himself, should the committee seek his testimony. All, of course, may well continue to resist anyway—but if so, they proceed at much greater risk to themselves.
Different people have suggested different things as to what constitutes, &quot;the unitary executive theory&quot;. The US Supreme Court is not likely to simply adopt such a theory in general terms. It will, instead, rule on a specific case that comes before it, and state the principles behind that ruling. There are a number of Supreme Court rulings saying that a President must abide by laws limiting presidential authority, perhaps the most famous is Youngstown Sheet &amp; Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952) in which the Court rules that the President did not have authority to seize steel mills to put a stop to a labor dispute that was allegedly endangering national security during the Korean War. Congress had passed a law providing a different method of dealing with such situations, and President Truman did not follow the method established by that law. The President has broad power over the operations of executive branch agencies, possibly including the right to order an investigation halted for whatever reasons seem good to the president. If such a case came before the courts and they supported the President, presumably they would hold that the President's actions did not constitute obstruction of justice or any other crime. I find it highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would rule that the President may &quot;act against the rule of law&quot;, but they might rule that in particular cases the law implicitly grants the President power to take certain actions that others may not take.
There is no current authorization to bar any member of the house from the floor, so the answer depends heavily on what actually happens. Since remote voting was approved, no constituency would be disenfranchised. But we could imagine the house adopting a rule barring remote participation, and also barring entry to the House floor for any person not wearing a mask. The House is constitutionally allowed to set its own rules. The House did bar Adam Clayton Powell from being seated, and he did indeed sue. SCOTUS, most importantly, asserted that this is a justiciable question, and most importantly &quot;In judging the qualifications of its members under Art. I, § 5, Congress is limited to the standing qualifications expressly prescribed by the Constitution&quot;. This could be overcome by expelling the member who refuses to wear a mask (Congress has the power to expel, but not exclude). There would be a significant conflict of rights in this case. Residents of the district has a right to representation (equal protection clause), but Congress has the right to expel members. But Congress has expelled 5 members, and most recently, Ohio's 17th district was without representation in the US House for a half a year after Traficant was expelled. That did not prevent the House from exercising its right to expel a member.
While I am not a lawyer, this is fairly well settled in US constitutional theory. The framers thought of impeachment is something very much like a legal process, which is shown, among other things by the procedure in the Senate being referred to in the Constitution as a &quot;trial&quot; and a vote to remove being described as a &quot;conviction&quot;. The use of the term &quot;High Crimes and Misdemeanors&quot; also suggests a legal process. In The Federalist, Hamilton took the view that the trial was to determine &quot;guilt or innocence&quot;, but would be inherently political.[A] But there is no supervising authority, and the Congress (and each house of it) is a very political body. Procedures for drafting and passing Articles of impeachment in the House are whatever the House chooses them to be on each particular occasion. Procedures and rules of evidence in a Senate trail are whatever the Senate chooses them to be on each occasion. There is no standard format which is binding, or even customary. Thus in practice an impeachment will be a political issue whenever the Congress treats it as one. Early in the history of the US there was an opinion among some legislators and politicians that an impeachment was simply a statement that &quot;we want your offices to give them to better men&quot;[B], suggesting that it be treated much like a vote of no-confidence in the UK parliament. In the impeachment of Justice Chase the Senate did not vote to convict, and this was held to establish the principle that actual wrong-doing, not mere political dispute, must be the basis of any impeachment. In the impeachments of Federal Judges, the procedure has been essentially legal, with accusations of actual crime, such as bribery or malfeasance in office, being the basis of impeachments, and Senate trials being quite similar to criminal trials. This was perhaps particularly apparent in the impeachment and trial of Justice Chase. The articles of impeachment drafted in the case of president Nixon also looked very much like an indictment for ordinary crime. The trial never took place, but discussions of its format at the tiem suggested that it would have also been somewhat like a criminal trial. But the impeachments and trials of Presidents Clinton and Trump had a much more political aspect to them. While accusations were made of actions alleged to be not just politically unacceptable but unlawful, the Senate essentially inquired not into the truth of the accusations, but into whether they were improprieties deserving of removal at all. This was essentially a political, not a legal decision, and was made in a quite partisan way in each case. The US Supreme Court has held that it has no authority to approve or disapprove the outcome of any impeachment proceeding (not does any other federal court). An &quot;impeachable offense&quot; is whatever the House choose to list in an Article of Impeachment, and a &quot;removable offense&quot; is whatever the Senate chooses to vote for removal on the basis of. Thus those preparing proposed articles or advocating them in a Senate trial will be as legalistic or political as they think the occasion demands. Notes and sources The Federalist on Impeachment [A] Essay number 65 of The Federalist (by Alexander Hamilton) begins: THE remaining powers which the plan of the convention allots to the Senate, in a distinct capacity, are comprised in their participation with the executive in the appointment to offices, and in their judicial character as a court for the trial of impeachments. As in the business of appointments the executive will be the principal agent, the provisions relating to it will most properly be discussed in the examination of that department. We will, therefore, conclude this head with a view of the judicial character of the Senate. A well-constituted court for the trial of impeachments is an object not more to be desired than difficult to be obtained in a government wholly elective. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself. The prosecution of them, for this reason, will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. In many cases it will connect itself with the pre-existing factions, and will enlist all their animosities, partialities, influence, and interest on one side or on the other; and in such cases there will always be the greatest danger that the decision will be regulated more by the comparative strength of parties, than by the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt. ... What, it may be asked, is the true spirit of the institution itself? Is it not designed as a method of NATIONAL INQUEST into the conduct of public men? If this be the design of it, who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves? It seems that Hamilton's ideal was that of a legal proceeding, a court, which was to determine &quot;guilt or innocence&quot;. But he was well aware of th importance that political factors (and factions) might assume in any impeachment trial, and regarded this as inherent in the nature of such a proceeding. Most constitutional scholars seem to have followed this line of thought. Giles [B] Senator William Branch Giles, leader of the Senate forces favorable to the Administration of President Jefferson, is reported by John Quincy Adams to have said: Impeachment was not a criminal prosecution ... and a removal by impeachment was nothing more than a declaration by Congress to this effect: &quot;You hold dangerous opinions, and if you are suffered to carry them into effect, you will work the destruction of the Union. We want your offices for the purposes of giving them to men who will fill them better.&quot; quoted from Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (J.P.Ipperncot &amp; Co; 1874) Volume 1, page 322; quoted in Grand Inquests By Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist (William Morrow &amp; Co; 1993) page 27 (Chapter 1) The Wikipedia article on Giles (linked above) says: Giles strongly advocated the removal of Justice Samuel Chase after his impeachment, urging the Senate to consider it as a political decision (as to whether the people of the United States should have confidence in Chase) rather than as a trial.