Season Two Research Files
Episode Six
1:00pm-2:00pm
PRESIDENTIAL PARDON
The presidential power to pardon is granted under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. "The President ... shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment."
Although the American government is established on a system of checks-and-balances, the pardon power is lodged solely with one individual: the President. While a few Founding Fathers suggested involving Congress in the pardons business, Alexander Hamilton remained certain the power should rest solely with the President. "It is not to be doubted, that a single man of prudence and good sense is better fitted, in delicate conjunctures, to balance the motives which may plead for and against the remission of the punishment, than any numerous body [Congress] whatever," he writes in Federalist No. 74. At the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the Framers accepted the argument that the prerogative of mercy, upon which the pardon power is based, is most efficiently and equitably exercised by a single individual, as opposed to a body of legislators or judges
Besides pardons, the President may also grant commutations (reductions) of sentences, remissions of fines, and reprieves. The Constitution does not provide grounds for reversing a Presidential pardon. A pardon also does not mandate expungement of court records relating to the conviction. Except for impeachment, the Constitution places no restrictions whatsoever on the President in granting pardons. The Constitution itself offered no guidance on how the President's pardon power was to be administered. Pardons were issued from the time of President Washington, but routine responsibility for supervising their issuance was not vested in any particular officer of the government, apart from the President.
In 1865, however, as the Civil War came to a close, the office of Pardon Clerk was set up. Its functions were transferred to the office of the Attorney in Charge of Pardons in 1893, which eventually became the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of the Pardon Attorney. The U.S. Pardon Attorney "assists" the President by reviewing and investigating all requests for pardons. For each request considered, the Pardon Attorney prepares the Justice Department's recommendation to the President for the final granting or denial of the pardon. Yet the recommendations of the Pardon Attorney to the President are only recommendations. The President, bound by no higher authority than Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution, is in no way required to follow such recommendations, and retains the ultimate power to grant or deny clemency.
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