As the Times editorial board argues in support of the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, it seems like a moment to address two obvious questions.

Why is the board making this argument now?

And: what is an editorial board in the first place?

I’m going to take the questions in reverse order, because the answer to the second provides some context for the answer to the first. Also, the second question is one I and my colleagues get asked constantly, including within the glass walls of The Times.

The editorial board is composed of 14 writers and editors drawn from the Times Opinion department, which also includes opinion columnists, Op-Ed editors and others. The Opinion department is independent of the Times newsroom, with a separate mission but the same standards for fact. The first anyone in the newsroom learned of the board’s editorial about the impeachment inquiry was when we posted it to The Times’s website at 5 a.m. on Friday.

The purpose of Times Opinion is to supply the wide-ranging debate about big ideas that a diverse democracy needs. Just in the last couple of days, we’ve had writers arguing against the impeachment inquiry and arguing for it. Amid that debate, the role of the editorial board is to provide Times readers with a long-range view formed not by one person’s expertise and experience but ballasted by certain institutional values that have evolved across more than 150 years. That’s why the editorials, unlike other articles at The Times, appear without a byline. I’ve always believed that strong institutions, like strong families, are meant to transmit principles across generations; the work of The Times’s editorial board has reflected the principles both of its members and of the Ochs-Sulzberger family, which has supplied the publishers who have overseen the board’s work — sometimes day to day, sometimes only on the occasion of momentous news — for five generations.