On the afternoon of November 20, 2019, Prof. Larry Kramer, President of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and former Dean of the Stanford University School of Law, visited the PKULS and was invited to hold a question in the conference room 303 of (Leo) Koguan Building . Prior to the lecture, Prof. Pan Jianfeng, Dean of the PKULS, met with Prof. Larry Kramer and his party. Prof. Guo Li, Secretary of the Party Committee of the School of PKULS, Prof. Wang Jin, Director of the Research Center of Resources, Energy and Environmental Law,  Zhang Qianfan, Wang Lei, He Qisheng, Tang Yingmao, Chen Ruoying, Peng Chun, Yu Qi and other college teachers and dean assistants Dr. Li Yuanyuan attended the event. The lecture was presided over by Zuo Yilu, an A.P. at PKULS. More than 40 teachers and students from universities and research institutes at home and abroad attended the lecture. 

Prof. Larry Kramer introduced the internationally concerned Trump Impeachment Case and introduced the nature and history of the impeachment system in the US Constitution. Prof. Kramer first outlined the "legal" and "political" aspects of the impeachment system, and pointed out that the essence of the impeachment system is that the president as the chief executive and the military chief should be held accountable. The impeachment system that originated in medieval England was reshaped when the United States Constitution was created in 1787. The professor then expounded the disputes between the founding fathers of the US and the constitution of the impeachment system in the constitutional period, and finally compromised. the result of. 

Subsequently, Prof. Kramer took the only three impeachment cases since the founding of the United States as an example to examine the specific operation of the impeachment system in practice. He pointed out that impeachment had not formed a fixed procedure in practice. There are major differences in the way the court proceedings are unfolded, and bipartisan politics also played different roles in the three impeachment cases. Based on the above observations, the professor further raised several major controversial issues facing the impeachment system, such as whether the acts targeted by impeachment should have the attributes of a criminal offense, whether the impeachment was directed against a single act or a package of acts, and whether impeachment should be one of the many ways to restrict presidential power "Final relief measures", certification standards for impeachment, etc. Prof. Kramer pointed out that these controversial questions are instructive to our understanding of the Trump impeachment case. 

At the end of the event, Prof. Guo Li, the Secretary of the Party Committee of the PKULS, summarized the lecture. He extended a warm welcome and heartfelt thanks to the visit of Prof. Larry Kramer, and sent a lecture poster as a memorial. The lecture ended successfully with applause. 

By Yan Danhua

Contributed by External Affairs Office

Translated by Li Jiayi

Edited by Rosie