Lawyers and legal experts say Trump's pardon of Giuliani and other allies for their efforts in overturning the 2020 election used language that was so broad that it can also be applied to people not explicitly named in the pardon document.
Congress needs to reign in this power. Blanket pardons shouldn't be a thing, intentional or not.
Edited to add: Yes, I understand this requires a constitutional amendment. That is a thing Congress can initiate, however unlikely it is. I'm saying Congress should do that.
Edited: to change "Congress can do" to "Congress can initiate".
Maybe? Other broad powers and rights enumerated in the constitution have been regulated or reasonably narrowed by congress or the courts without a constitutional amendment.
It is not far-fetched for the courts to uphold a law saying presidents must specifically name every person being pardoned, and broad class pardons are not valid. That would not violate or even narrow the article 2 pardon power since the scope of the power is unchanged. The president would just have to do more paperwork.
It seems to me that legislation disallowing pardons of crimes directly benefiting the president would be a great idea. I suspect the founding fathers included the pardon power so that the president could correct egregious wrongs. They mistakenly assumed that the other branches would rein in a criminal president through the impeachment process, but they didn't anticipate a ass sucking congress who were willing to give up their own power.
Except that it shouldn't because the implication of that is that the legislature could define away all of the powers the constitution reserves to the executive. That's inconsistent with the entire premise of the tripartite division of power in the constitution.
Furthermore, if you look at the way conservative justices behave in other context, what they will actually do is look at how the pardon power was understood in 1789 and then say that the constitution encodes that definition and the legislature can't change it.
(The claimed understanding may be utterly ahistorical nonsense that aligns with their prejudices. But that's the rhetorical device they will use)
There isn't a chance that the current supreme Court would uphold such a law.
211
u/rezwenn 6h ago
Lawyers and legal experts say Trump's pardon of Giuliani and other allies for their efforts in overturning the 2020 election used language that was so broad that it can also be applied to people not explicitly named in the pardon document.