When the framers of the United States constitution considered how to set up the impeachment process, they debated any number of issues: whether the president should be subject to impeachment at all; what the grounds should be; what body should conduct the trial.
But the discussion two centuries ago did not touch on the very matter that is central to the current debate about President Clinton: what the meaning of the word "try" is.
The constitution grants the Senate the "sole power to try all impeachments". As the Senate convened the second presidential impeachment trial in history, the question was what that trial should entail - whether it needs to look, as the Georgetown University law professor Susan Low Bloch put it, like "the Perry Mason vision of a trial" or whether something less would suffice.
Would it be appropriate, as some senators want, to open the proceedings but quickly suspend them - without hearing from any of the relevant witnesses - if it became clear that there was not the necessary two-thirds majority to support conviction? Or, having received two articles of impeachment from the House, would the Senate be derelict in its constitutional responsibilities, as other senators and the House members charged with prosecuting the impeachment case argue, if it truncated the proceedings without hearing the evidence amassed against the President?
There have been 14 impeachment trials in US history, but only one of a president, that of Andrew Johnson in 1868. There have been only three - a trio of federal judges convicted and removed from office during the 1980s - since 1936. Of those 14, the Senate has convicted seven, all federal judges.
In all but one case, the Senate has held hearings that looked like the courtroom version of a trial, featuring not only arguments by both sides but witnesses subjected to cross-examination. The Andrew Johnson impeachment case lasted nearly 21/2 months, including more than two weeks in which the House managers and the president's lawyers called witnesses and presented documentary evidence.
In the recent judicial impeachments, however, the Senate has delegated the fact-finding to a committee of senators who oversaw the trial. The full Senate then reviewed the evidence they amassed - a practice that the Supreme Court upheld in a 1993 ruling by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who will preside at President Clinton's trial.
In the 1988 trial of Judge Alcee Hastings, senators limited the presentation of evidence to 38 hours for each side, and still took 18 days to hear the case, which featured 55 witnesses; the full Senate then spent almost four days considering preliminary motions, hearing closing arguments and debating the matter.
The exception to the Senate's tradition of conducting trial-type processes came in the chamber's first impeachment case: the proceedings against Sen William Blount of Tennessee, who was expelled by the Senate the day after the House voted to impeach him. Mr Blount argued that senators were not "civil officers of the United States" and therefore not subject to impeachment. In 1799, the Senate agreed and voted to dismiss the impeachment resolution for lack of jurisdiction.
A century later, in the 1876 trial of the Secretary of War, Mr William Belknap, who was impeached for taking bribes, the Senate considered, but rejected, a pre-trial motion to dismiss the charges, again on the grounds that it lacked jurisdiction. Mr Belknap had resigned the day before the House vote and argued that, because he had stepped down, the Senate had no authority to proceed.
In a decision with parallels to the current situation, the Senate rejected Mr Belknap's motion by a majority vote, rebuffing the argument that because a two-thirds vote was required for conviction the Senate also needed a two-thirds vote to continue. The trial proceeded but, not surprisingly given the earlier vote, he was acquitted when the Senate failed to muster a two-thirds majority.
Some scholars are concerned about the long-term implications of a shortened trial in the Clinton case. The Rutgers University political scientist Mr Ross K. Baker warned about the potentially poisonous effect on House-Senate relations. "I don't think the senators should be in the position of having the House members, having done all the heavy lifting, suffered all the opprobrium, then get up and utter a few incantations and declare the whole thing over," he said.