Pardons

Autorentext

Frank O. Bowman III is a former prosecutor and sometime criminal defense lawyer, scholar of criminal and constitutional law, and legal historian. His writing on federal sentencing law and his book High Crimes and Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump (2d ed. 2024) have made him an influential voice in debates about crime and presidential power.

Klappentext

Pardons is an unprecedented history of the pardon power, chronicling how British monarchs and American presidents have wielded clemency to afford mercy, reconcile societies, and exert executive supremacy. The book traces the pardon power from its origins as an attribute of absolute monarchy to its adoption by the American Framers as one of the few enumerated powers of the president of the United States. It tells the stories, human and political, of all forty-five presidents who have wielded the pardon power and of those they pardoned. The book argues that the increasing abuse of presidential clemency and the effective elimination of impeachment and criminal prosecution as constraints on presidential misconduct have made the pardon power a threat to the rule of law. To address this growing danger, Pardons calls for presidential pardon powers to be eliminated or transferred to Congress by constitutional amendment.

Inhalt

Introduction; 1. Pardons and kingship in Britain, 1066-1788; 2. Pardons in the British North American Colonies, 1607-1775; 3. Pardons in America in the revolutionary period, 1775-1787; 4. The founders' pardon power; 5. Presidential pardons from George Washington to James Buchanan, 1789-1861; 6. Pardons and amnesties during the civil war - Lincoln's clemency, 1861-1865; 7. Pardons and amnesties during reconstruction, Part I. The Presidency of Andrew Johnson: (1865-1869) 8. Pardons and amnesties during reconstruction, Part II. The presidencies of Ulysses S. Grant and Rutherford B. Hayes (1869-1881) 9. Pardons from the end of reconstruction to the eve of World War I: James Garfield through William Howard Taft; 10. Pardons in the era of the administrative state and global war: Woodrow Wilson through Lyndon Johnson; 11. The pardon process begins to wither: Nixon, Ford, and Carter (1968-1980); 12. Reagan to Obama (1981-2017) - The near-death and brief, controversial resurrection of the pardon power as a tool of federal criminal justice reform; 13. Pardons as tools of political warfare: Donald Trump's first term; 14. The pardons of Joe Biden and Trump's second term; 15. The law of pardons: general rules; 16. The law of pardons: congress and the pardon power; 17. The law of pardons: the imagined power of self-pardon; 18. Executive discretion and the rule of law: pardons, presidential immunity and impeachment; 19. The constitution should be amended to abolish or modify the presidential pardon power.