President Trump Pardons Sheriff Joseph Arpaio
The President...shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Article II, Section 2, Clause 1
Ex parte Garland 71 U.S. 333 (1866)
Arpaio Pardon Would Show Contempt for Constitution - Bloomberg
by Noah Feldman // Bloomberg View
Is Accepting a Pardon an Admission of Guilt?
by Eugene Volokh //WaPo
Trump's Law and Order is Weak on the Law
by Maggie Haberman // NY Times
Trump's Pardon Follows the Law Yet Challenges It
by Adam Liptak // NY Times
The President...shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
Article II, Section 2, Clause 1
Ex parte Garland 71 U.S. 333 (1866)
Arpaio Pardon Would Show Contempt for Constitution - Bloomberg
by Noah Feldman // Bloomberg View
Is Accepting a Pardon an Admission of Guilt?
by Eugene Volokh //WaPo
Trump's Law and Order is Weak on the Law
by Maggie Haberman // NY Times
Trump's Pardon Follows the Law Yet Challenges It
by Adam Liptak // NY Times
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s decision to pardon Joe Arpaio was characteristically unconventional. It came late on a Friday night as a hurricane bore down on Texas. It concerned a crime some said was particularly ill-suited to clemency, and it was not the product of the care and deliberation that have informed pardons by other presidents.
But it was almost certainly lawful. The Constitution gives presidents extremely broad power to grant pardons.
Last month, a federal judge found Mr. Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff, guilty of criminal contempt for defying a court order to stop detaining immigrants based solely on the suspicion that they were in the country illegally. The order had been issued in a lawsuit that accused the sheriff’s office of violating the Constitution by using racial profiling to jail Latinos. Mr. Arpaio had faced a sentence of up to six months in jail.
Mr. Trump thus used his constitutional power to block a federal judge’s effort to enforce the Constitution. Legal experts said they found this to be the most troubling aspect of the pardon, given that it excused the lawlessness of an official who had sworn to defend the constitutional structure.
Noah Feldman, a law professor at Harvard, argued before the pardon was issued that such a move “would express presidential contempt for the Constitution.”
“Arpaio didn’t just violate a law passed by Congress,” Professor Feldman wrote on Bloomberg View. “His actions defied the Constitution itself, the bedrock of the entire system of government.” By saying Mr. Arpaio’s offense was forgivable, Professor Feldman added, Mr. Trump threatens “the very structure on which his right to pardon is based.”
It was the first act of outright defiance against the judiciary by a president who has not been shy about criticizing federal judges who ruled against his businesses and policies. But while the move may have been unusual, there is nothing in the text of the Constitution’s pardons clause to suggest that he exceeded his authority.
The president, the clause says, “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”
The pardon power extends only to federal crimes. Otherwise, presidents are free to use it as they see fit. As the Supreme Court put it in an 1866 decision involving a former Confederate senator, Ex Parte Garland, the power “is unlimited.”
“It extends,” the court said, “to every offense known to the law.”
In a tweet last month, Mr. Trump indicated that he had studied the matter in the context of the investigation of ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. “All agree the U.S. president has the complete power to pardon,” he wrote.
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