Constitutionally backward is how we would describe the assertion by the Democrats that President Trump is being contemptuous of Congress by failing to mount in the House a defense against impeachment. The Times, in an editorial this afternoon, says that by signaling that he won’t “mount any defense,” the president is suggesting that “it is somehow beneath him to participate in a constitutional process.”

That’s strikes us as a bit touchy. And just wrong in respect of who is supposed to bear the burden in these kinds of things. It’s a bedrock principle in American law, after all, that in criminal matters — and that’s what bribery, treason, high crimes, and misdemeanors are — the burden is always, and entirely, on the prosecution. No man is ever required to defend himself from a crime in America. Failing to do so is not demeaning.

Nor, for that matter, is it all that unusual for a person accused of a crime to fail to mount a defense. Particularly, in an American courtroom, when the defense reckons the prosecution hasn’t presented a compelling case. In criminal courts, of course, the burden of proof is enormously high; the prosecution must convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. And the prosecution has to convince every member of the jury.

We understand full well also, too, that an impeachment isn’t exactly the same as a prosecution in a criminal court. The proceeding in the House is more like the stage of things faced by a suspect before a grand jury, though in a grand jury the accused doesn’t even have a chance to mount a defense. In the House, at least a prospective impeachee could mount a defense if he wanted to. He’s not, though, required to do so.

Come the trial in the Senate, which is roughly, if only roughly, analogous to the petit jury, impeachment is sharply different from a regular criminal trial. In the Senate, a conviction doesn’t require the “jury” to be unanimous. It requires but a two-thirds majority. Plus too, in impeachment proceedings there is a political element. That’s why, say, in the trial of President Clinton in the Senate, not a single Democrat voted to convict.

In neither the Senate nor the House, though, does the impeached person bear a burden to defend himself. So why in the world should it be demeaning for a president or other person up for impeachment to refuse to defend himself? Moreover, there are plenty of non-demeaning reasons why a person being impeached (or on trial in criminal court) might not want to defend himself.

It may be, say, that the person up for impeachment doesn’t believe a credible case has been made. Millions of Americans, ourselves included, have been reading of the charade in the House and wondering where’s the crime. In the Trump case, maybe the President simply doesn’t want to waste his time in the House. Or telegraph his defense strategy in advance of the trial. Maybe he’s preoccupied with work — the economy, say, or the war.

That is no knock against the House. Everyone acknowledges that the House, and only the House, has the constitutional power of impeachment. It’s their ball. The president, though, does not have to defend himself. He is not required to send a lawyer. The House can subpoena what it wants, and if the president fails to answer, it can impeach him for that, too, as the Democrats keep boasting they will. The Senate would then have to decide.

Mr. Trump bears no burden to defend himself in the Senate, either, though it gets trickier there. For one thing, he’s likely to get a fairer process in the Senate. That’s not surprising, since the process is partly political and the Senate is held by the Republicans. Peril can lurk in the Senate, though, as President Nixon learned. In any event, it strikes us that, so far, Mr. Trump is handling the burdens of impeachment far better than the Democrats are.