Judicial Branch and Political Crisis: Focusing on the Analysis of the Argumentation Structure of the President’s Impeachment Decision

Abstract

This study discusses on the presidential impeachment perceiving it as a constitutional device to overcome the internal political crisis - the loss of the president's control of state affairs - within the constitutional system. With so much power concentrated on the president, the president's vacancy can lead to a serious power vacuum. Whether this crisis can be resolved and turned into a stable phase is entirely left to the decision maker, the Constitutional Court. It might be wrong to leave the final judgment to the judicial branch even though the presidential impeachment is a political dispute. But the political nature of the presidential impeachment does not automatically make the Constitutional Court's decision political. Rather, the stronger the political character, the more faithful the Constitutional Court will try to be to the literary and logical interpretation based on normative principles. In the two presidential impeachment cases, the Constitutional Court used the principle of prohibition of excessive restriction, particularly balancing test, in the process of argumentation for conclusion.