Word: rodino
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ready, Rodino quietly assigned Jerome Zeifman, chief of the Judiciary staff, and two of his assistants to study the process and precedents. Rodino, who in 1973 had dropped his Newark law practice, which had always cut into his time in Washington, began boning up on how the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had viewed impeachment...
...Rodino also studied the seminal writings of Edmund Burke, the 18th century conservative sage, who argued that impeachment should rest "not upon the niceties of a narrow jurisprudence, but upon the enlarged and solid principles of state morality." Three times the chairman read Historian Michael Les Benedict's 1973 book entitled The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson. Rodino was frank enough to admit his awe at his onrushing responsibilities. "I lie awake at nights," he once admitted. "I just hope I'll be able to live up to them...
Promised an unlimited budget by Speaker Albert, Rodino began assembling a separate impeachment staff-which was to grow to 105, nearly half of them lawyers-and started looking for a chief counsel. To avoid any charge of partisanship, Rodino wanted an outsider and a Republican. For two months, while the Democratic leadership squirmed at the delay, Rodino consulted deans of law schools, judges, bar-association officials and leading attorneys before choosing John Doar in December...
From the start, Rodino recognized the danger that the inquiry would blow up in the hands of the Democrats if the nation perceived it to be a partisan vendetta against the President. Even so, Rodino was charged with partisanship himself early on, when he gaveled through decisions on party-line votes to give himself sole subpoena powers. Later, Rodino gave up that right and got strong bipartisan support for the eight subpoenas for presidential tapes, all of which Nixon refused to honor...
Assiduously, Rodino backed off on other matters. Against the advice of Doar, Rodino decided in fairness to allow Presidential Counsel James St. Clair not only to attend the sessions but to question witnesses and to call all six of the witnesses he wanted. And all the while, the chairman was urging the Democratic firebrands to stop calling for impeachment...