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September 14, 2021

Last call for "Donald Trump’s Theatre of Pardoning: What Did We Learn?"

Today is the day for this online panel, the first in a terrific series of online panels exploring in depth federal clemency powers.  As explained in this prior post, this series is jointly organized by the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, the Federal Sentencing Reporter, and the David F. and Constance B. Girard-diCarlo Center for Ethics, Integrity and Compliance at Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law. 

A whole lot of folks are doing great work putting this series together, and Margaret Love merits extra praise for her efforts and for helping to assemble writings on these timely topics in Volume 33, Issue 5 of the Federal Sentencing Reporter (which largely provides the foundation for these panels).  Here are more details about today's first panel:

Donald Trump’s Theatre of Pardoning: What Did We Learn?

Tuesday, September 14, 2021 | 12:30 – 2:00 p.m. EDT | Zoom  (Register here)

This panel will examine the unusual nature of President Donald Trump’s pardoning, looking at the grants themselves and the process that produced them.  Professors Bernadette Meyler and Frank Bowman, both scholars of the pardon power, will look to history for anything comparable to Trump’s use of the pardon power, and comment on its implications for the role that pardon has historically played in the U.S. justice system.  Amy Povah will share her experiences as someone who was personally involved in recommending cases to the White House at the end of the Trump Administration.  Kenneth Vogel will share his experiences as a journalist covering Trump’s pardons for the New York Times.  This panel will set the stage for the two subsequent panels about the future of presidential pardoning, by asking basic questions about the role of a regular pardon process and the result of it having been sidelined by Trump.  It will also consider whether Trump’s pardons were an aberration or the predictable result of trends in pardoning over the past thirty years.

Panelists:

Frank Bowman, Floyd R. Gibson Missouri Endowed Professor of Law, University of Missouri School of Law
Bernadette Meyler, Carl and Sheila Spaeth Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
Amy Povah, founder, CAN-DO Justice through Clemency
Kenneth VogelNew York Times

Moderator:

Margaret Love, executive director, Collateral Consequences Resource Center and former U.S. Pardon Attorney

September 14, 2021 at 09:26 AM | Permalink

Comments

"I guess we learned not to do it again." That's only half joking.

But more seriously, I chuckle at this synopsis of the series. "unusual"? Talk about understatement of the millennium. "process"? If he had a process, that's news to me. Bribing people close to him like Dershowitz I don't think qualifies for that description. Beyond that, can you name *any* aspect of his "administration" that had a process? "aberration or the predictable result of trends"? That's hardly a close call that warrants extensive discussion.

Posted by: kotodama | Sep 14, 2021 5:26:54 PM

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