Teacher Review Buckner Melton Middle Georgia State University

MGA Faculty Fellow member'south Research Takes Historical Look at U.Due south. Impeachments

Author: Sheron Smith
Posted: Monday, Nov 11, 2019 12:00 AM
Categories: School of Arts and Letters | Faculty/Staff | Pressroom | In the News

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Macon, GA

Dr. Buckner Melton Jr., MGA history lecturer, with a copy of his book about the U.S. first impeachment - that of Sen. William Blount of Tennessee in 1798. Photo by Anna Lipson.

One of the starting time big national news events Dr. Buck Melton Jr. remembers is Watergate, a catchall term describing a web of political scandals that likely would have led to President Richard Nixon's impeachment had he not resigned in 1974.

Melton was a bookish kid, insatiably curious nearly history and politics. His father, Buck Melton Sr., was at the time a Macon lawyer who would soon exist elected to his showtime term equally the city'southward mayor.

"My dad and I started having discussions almost Watergate and impeachment, so I probably knew more about those topics than any other 12-year-sometime around," said the younger Melton, now a lecturer of history at Eye Georgia State Academy (MGA).

Those conversations with his begetter were part of the foundation upon which Melton afterward built a career as a constitutional and legal historian, with impeachment as one of his research specialties. Despite Watergate, and Nixon's shut brush with impeachment, the topic was relatively obscure, at least from a historical perspective.

Fast forward to 1998.

That was the twelvemonth Congress impeached President Bill Clinton in the wake of a scandal that stemmed from a sexual harassment lawsuit filed confronting him past one woman and his lying about a sexual relationship with another, White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton was the second American president to be impeached, the beginning being Andrew Johnson in 1868.*

Soon before the Clinton scandal surged into public view, Melton had finished writing a volume about Congress's outset impeachment always – that of Sen. William Blount of Tennessee in 1798. Practically overnight, the book's niche topic propelled Melton into the spotlight equally certain members of the House of Representatives, also equally some senators, sought out anyone who could provide legal and historical insight into what exactly impeachment entails. In improver to consulting with lawmakers of both major parties, Melton gave interviews to newspapers and provided assay for NPR, MSNBC, and CSPAN.

Though not still as prolifically every bit 21 years agone, Melton is once again providing adept takes to media in the wake of an impeachment research against President Donald Trump. The latest inquiry is related to allegations that, in order to advance his political interests, Trump pressured the leader of Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, a potential 2020 presidential election opponent, and his son Hunter.

The effect is dominating the highly polarized surround of U.Due south. politics, leaving Melton with mixed feelings. He is proud to be one of the relatively few U.S. scholars with extensive knowledge of impeachment, but too concerned about deep political and cultural rifts fueling the starkly dissimilar ways people view the process.

"I happened to be in the right identify at the right time" during the Clinton impeachment, he said. "I did not think I would exist here again."

A Macon native, Melton graduated from Tattnall Square University and enrolled at Mercer Academy, where he earned a B.A. in history and political science. He moved on to Duke University and earned a master'due south degree and PhD in history. Duke is likewise where he met his wife, Dr. Carol Melton, at present an MGA history professor.

In the tardily 1980s, Melton was scouting around for his PhD dissertation topic when the Iran-Contra affair burst into the news. As described by The History Channel's website, Iran-Contra was a clandestine U.S. arms deal that traded missiles and other arms to free some Americans held hostage by terrorists in Lebanon, but also used funds from the arms deal to support armed conflict in Nicaragua. The controversial dealmaking and subsequent political scandal drove contend over whether President Ronald Reagan committed an impeachable offense.

Reagan ultimately never faced an impeachment enquiry. Simply Iran-Contra did provide Melton with his inquiry focus: Under the Constitution, exactly what kind of offenses by federal officials are subject to impeachment; that is, the filing of formal charges. Melton discovered there was little published scholarship virtually historical precedents, which inspired him to take his groundbreaking deep dive into the 1798 impeachment of Blount.

To Melton, what makes that first U.S. impeachment so significant is that information technology took place just 10 years after the Constitution was drafted. Many of the framers were still around; some were members of Congress. How they wrestled with questions about the impeachment process maybe offers clues as to their original constitutional intent.

Anyone curious about the whole affair can read Melton's book, only here'south the crux: The House of Representatives impeached Blount, a land speculator who routinely used his political position to expand his wealth, on charges related to a financially motivated scheme to help the British gain command of part of Florida and Louisiana from the Castilian – basically an attempt to break up the U.S.

"That's about every bit dramatic equally it can get," Melton said. Then, as at present, ane of the central issues was whether the alleged law-breaking "was an indictable crime, or something else."

Afterwards completing his PhD, Melton went on to earn a law caste from the University of Northward Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined the law school'due south faculty and began working to adapt his dissertation into the aforementioned book. Mercer University Press ended up publishing Melton'due south The First Impeachment: The Constitution's Framers and the Case of Senator William Blount.

A few years subsequently his 15 minutes of Clinton impeachment fame, Melton relocated back to Macon to care for his aging parents. His wife joined the faculty of Heart Georgia State, and a bit later Melton joined her at the Academy every bit a full-time lecturer.

In addition to teaching, Melton researches and writes books on diverse historical topics. He's published 8, including the Blount volume. His fields of interest, besides American constitutional and legal history, include naval history, which is the bailiwick of his currently-on-hiatus podcast: world wide web.navalhistorypodcast.com.

Melton plans to revive the podcast shortly but he might be decorated for a while. In recent weeks he has provided analysis and historical context of the current impeachment inquiry to Georgia Public Broadcasting, a San Francisco-based radio news show, and near notably, through his comprehensive article published by The Atlantic magazine.

Regardless of the current enquiry's outcome, Melton somberly predicts that the nation'southward ongoing political divisions volition result in more frequent attempts by Congress to use the impeachment process.

"In the start ii hundred years of our history, we impeached exactly i president," he said. "In the concluding 50, we almost impeached Nixon, nosotros did impeach Clinton, and nosotros're probably nearly to impeach Trump. I don't think that'southward a tendency that bodes well for the country."

_{*What exactly is impeachment? Here's the description from the U.South. Senate's official website: "If a federal official commits a law-breaking or otherwise acts improperly, the Business firm of Representatives may impeach - formally accuse - that official. If the official subsequently is convicted in a Senate impeachment trial, he is removed from office." Both Clinton and Johnson were acquitted in their subsequent Senate trials.}

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Source: https://www.mga.edu/news/2019/11/mga-professor-impeachment-research.php