(This op-ed was first published in The New York Times on February 13, 2021.)

G.O.P. lawmakers were unlikely to convict Trump. But a different approach to impeachment would have been more difficult for them to ignore.

Probably nothing could have moved enough Republican senators to vote to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial.

But the way the House chose to frame the article of impeachment made the prospect less likely. If the purpose of the proceeding was to produce a conviction and disqualification from future office, as opposed to mere political theater, the House should have crafted a broader and less legalistic set of charges.

The sole article of impeachment was for “incitement of insurrection.”

(Continue reading the op-ed on The New York Time’s page here.)

Michael McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge appointed by President George W. Bush, is a professor and the director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. He is the author, most recently, of “The President Who Would Not Be King: Executive Power Under the Constitution.”