PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner is asking the courts to weigh in on his impeachment trial, which is currently set to begin on Jan. 18. But it remains to be seen how much those courts will want to get involved.
Villanova Law School professor Brenner Fissell says the Pennsylvania Constitution sets different rules than those at the federal level, so it remains to be seen what role courts will play.
“Are they going to follow the federal model and completely let the legislature handle impeachments without any judicial oversight, or are they going to actually get involved?” Fissell said. “That's going to be up to the Pennsylvania courts.”
Fissell said direct parallels can’t be drawn between the impeachment trials of former President Donald Trump and of Krasner.
One of Krasner’s arguments is that the legislative session ended on the last day of November. He says that in Pennsylvania, anything that wasn’t finished by the end of the session does not carry over to the next general assembly.
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Temple Law professor Craig Green says it remains to be seen if that argument works, but he notes the decision to impeach in the House broke down on party lines. In the upcoming session, Democrats will have a one-seat majority in the House.
“I don't know of any state where that's happened, where somebody tries to pursue impeachment articles that the new legislature doesn't even support,” said Green. “I think that's really, really peculiar.”
The state House of Representatives, with a Republican majority at the time, voted 107-85 in November to impeach Krasner. The GOP-led Senate accepted articles of impeachment days later. The newly-elected Senate, which will also be Republican-led, will hold the trial.
Krasner also argues the legislature doesn’t have the authority to impeach him, and the allegations in the articles don’t rise to the level of “misbehavior in office.”
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“This is a political trial,” said Fissell. “Impeachment trials are not really governed by the law in the way that an actual trial is. Even if a court said misbehavior in office is ‘x,’ it's not clear that the legislature would be bound by that.”
Additionally, Green said that since there aren’t many examples of impeachment trials in Pennsylvania history, it’s hard to predict how courts will rule.
“Pennsylvania has had almost no impeachment proceedings during its history back to colonial times,” said Green. “There's only ever been three people convicted through an impeachment proceeding, so there's not a lot of examples for anybody to look at.”