The Collateral Consequences Resource Center is pleased to announce a series of online panels on successive Tuesdays in September, starting on September 14, that will explore in depth the use of the pardon power by President Donald Trump, and how it both reflects recent trends in pardoning and is likely to influence pardoning in the future. The first panel, on September 14, will discuss Trump’s abandonment of the bureaucratic tradition in pardoning and what this reveals both about his concept of office and about the nature of the constitutional power. The second panel, on September 21, will consider whether Trump’s…
Read moreTag: barkow
The “president’s idle executive power” and collateral consequences
In their Washington Post op ed on the President’s neglect of his pardon power posted earlier on this site, Rachel Barkow and Mark Osler are critical of the Justice Department’s bureaucratic process for processing applications for executive clemency, which they argue takes a very long time and yields very little. (The New York Times editorialized last year in a similar vein about how DOJ has effectively sidelined the president’s power as a tool for justice for more than 20 years.) Barkow and Osler ask why Justice considered it necessary or wise to farm out the processing of thousands of petitions from federal prisoners…
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