On Tuesday, House Democrats unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, marking only the fourth time in American history that a President has faced impeachment charges. They included two specific accusations — one of abusing the power of his office and another of obstructing Congress’s investigation into his relationship with Ukraine — that fall under the umbrella of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The Judiciary Committee approved the articles of impeachment 23-17 on Dec. 13. The 435 members of the House of Representatives will now have to look at the evidence and decide whether or not it warrants impeaching President Trump. If the House of Representatives votes to impeach, the Senate will then vote on whether to convict or remove the President from office.

…

“In England a lot of the impeachment cases had relied on this language of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ from the 1640s onward,” Bernadette Meyler, a law professor at Stanford Law School, explains.

…

Stanford’s Meyler explains that the Clinton impeachment caused debate among scholars because “some people felt that, look, there’s a crime, but not every crime rises to the level of an impeachable offense. This wasn’t something that really pertained to the office, and so therefore it didn’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense.” But others argued that since a crime was clearly committed, that was enough for impeachment.