Those trying to interpret the Trump impeachment trial often try to make the proceedings more relatable to the public by comparing them to criminal trials they may have participated in as jurors or spectators
This isn’t, strictly speaking, a trial judge. Photo: Hilary Markiewicz/Senate Television via Getty Images Quite understandably, those trying to explain or interpret the Trump impeachment trial often try to make the proceedings more relatable to the reading or viewing public by analogizing them to criminal trials they may have participated in as jurors or spectators or learned about in the vast storehouse of pop-culture courtroom depictions.
But it’s worth remembering that an impeachment trial of a president of the United States isn’t, strictly speaking, a criminal trial at all. Certainly, the constitutional Founders and the senators who fashioned their chamber’s standing rules on impeachment trials were certainly influenced by their own experiences with the Anglo-American judicial tradition.
If Roberts is as much a legislative presiding officer as a “judge” in this trial, senators are part judges and part jurors. Some have directly analogized them to trial jurors, insofar as they remain silent during the trial itself and take an oath of impartiality. But, as Marimow notes, they are nothing like jurors in other respects:
In criminal trials, of course, jurors cannot overrule the trial judge on procedural and evidentiary rulings, either. Yes, the “juror” identity is popular among senators who don’t want to make their opinions known about matters under discussion in the trial until it’s over. But it’s mostly a fiction. There’s nothing in law or tradition that keeps one of these “jurors” from stepping out of the Senate’s silent cocoon and waxing eloquent in interviews.
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