Cite as: 506 U. S. 224 (1993)
White, J., concurring in judgment
will have failed to "try" impeachments.2 See id., at 52. Indeed in this respect, "try" presents no greater, and perhaps fewer, interpretive difficulties than some other constitutional standards that have been found amenable to familiar techniques of judicial construction, including, for example, "Commerce . . . among the several States," Art. I, § 8, cl. 3, and "due process of law," Amdt. 5. See Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 189 (1824) ("The subject to be regulated is commerce; and our constitution being . . . one of enumeration, and not of definition, to ascertain the extent of the power, it becomes necessary to settle the meaning of the word"); Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 334 (1976) (" ' "[D]ue process," unlike some legal rules, is not a technical conception with a fixed content unrelated to time, place and circumstances' ") (quoting Cafeteria & Restaurant Workers v. McElroy, 367 U. S. 886, 895 (1961)).3
2 It is not a sufficient rejoinder to this example to say, with one of the Court of Appeals judges below, that it postulates a "monstrous hypothetical abuse." See 290 U. S. App. D. C. 420, 427, 938 F. 2d 239, 246 (1991). The unlikelihood of the example being realized does not undermine the point that "try" has a definable meaning and thus ought to be regarded as judicially manageable.
3 The majority's in terrorem argument against justiciability—that judicial review of impeachments might cause national disruption and that the courts would be unable to fashion effective relief—merits only brief attention. In the typical instance, court review of impeachments would no more render the political system dysfunctional than has this litigation. Moreover, the same capacity for disruption was noted and rejected as a basis for not hearing Powell. Powell v. McCormack, 395 U. S. 486, 549 (1969). The relief granted for unconstitutional impeachment trials would presumably be similar to the relief granted to other unfairly tried public employee-litigants. Finally, as applied to the special case of the President, the majority's argument merely points out that, were the Senate to convict the President without any kind of a trial, a constitutional crisis might well result. It hardly follows that the Court ought to refrain from upholding the Constitution in all impeachment cases. Nor does it follow that, in cases of Presidential impeachment, the Justices ought to abandon their constitutional responsibilities because the Senate has precipitated a crisis.
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