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Constitution has some excellent checks and balances but the blanket pardon isn't one of them. The pardon doesn't do anything to address systemic problems in th

Constitution has some excellent checks and balances but the blanket pardon isn't one of them. The pardon doesn't do anything to address systemic problems in the justice system and has become a channel for doling out political favors.

mwigdahl 6y ago
It's not intended to address systemic problems in the justice system. That is the province of the legislature.
beervirus 6y ago
The pardon power—for federal crimes only—also comes from a time when there just weren’t very many federal crimes. The framers did not predict the explosion of 18 USC that we’ve seen in the last century.
- briandear 6y ago
  Which is probably an apt statement on the overgrowth of the federal government. The 10th Amendment has been so twisted and bent as to almost be unrecognizable.
BurningFrog 6y ago
It's meant to address individual problems, not systemic ones. Though I agree calling it a "check & balance" is pretentious. It's at best an instrument for mercy. Of course it can be abused, but if you have a bad president, that's not on the top 10 list of problems.
ortusdux 6y ago
Technically, a president could pardon all federal marijuana convictions, and announce that they will continue to do so for the remainder of their term. Basically, it could be used to address systemic problems in the federal court system. A large portion of Biden's term will probably be spent trying to return to norms, so I doubt anything like this would happen.
- DevX101 6y ago
  I'm for legalization of marijuana but think that's a terrible idea. This effectively makes one person the arbiter of law.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Most USA residents support marijuana legalization, and that has been the case for over a decade.
  - x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
    If you have laws that are passed with racial control in mind, such as our drug laws, then mass pardoning is an act of justice and not someone becoming the arbiter of law.
    - jshevek 6y ago
      > If [criteria], then mass pardoning is an act of justice and not someone becoming the arbiter of law. I dont understand your comment. Are you thinking that acts of justice, by definition, cannot also be the product of a person becoming an arbiter of law? That you perceive a decision as just doesn't change whether a person might or might not be acting as an arbiter of law.
    - joshuamorton 6y ago
      Consider the alternative: a president who announces they will blanket pardon all white people and no one else.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        That’s…not the alternative. I mean, I suppose its one of a near-infinite number of possible alternatives, but I don’t see how its an even relevant one. The discussion wasn’t about someone pardoning only black people, it was about pardoning all people convicted under a particular set of laws.
emn13 6y ago
This myth that the US constitution is in any way "good" is weird. It's one of the earliest; and fortunately others leared from its mistakes. Including the US itself, when it had considerable influence in drafting the WW2 losers constitutions, which uncoincidentally are quite different from the US. Checks and balances essentially don't work in the US. The best bit is simply a decent judiciary, but that was mostly copied from the British. And even that is more poorly executed than elsewhere, due to the political nature of judicial appointees, and esp. due to the tradition of direct elections of some judges. I'd say it's arguably worse than the British model it was copied from, not because the Brits were psychic geniuses, but because of the not entirely unrelated fact that the UK model is much more open to reform; it's aged better because it's less crufty. When lead by a dangerously populist government that might be risk, of course, but so far even populists have turned out not to do too much consitutional harm - might differ in the future. It's more like: the US constitution was grand it its aims, but pretty v1.0 in its execution. It's full of unintentional (or at least unfortunate) indirect effects that didn't work out too well; such as that congress is likely to deadlock; that the constitution isn't sufficiently amendable; that its form of democracy is subject to unproportional divergence as state population sizes diverge, that by contrast adding new states is way too easy, that elections at all are in no way shape or form necessarily fair (and I don't there there has ever been a particularly free&fair election in the states) due to gerrymandering, state size disparities, imbalanced voting registration requirements, and lack of constitutional protections for elections in general; the presence of systematic biased introduced by winner-takes-all approaches; the lack of a checks on the presidency (clearly not intentional, but impeachment is a purely hypothetical check). I'm sure actual scholars could name a bunch more. Then theres the more general flaws in legal republics, such as that there no systematic mechanism for reform; laws just accumlate leaving extremely outdated wordings on the books forever, and with ever increasingly large rulebooks. Seriously, name 1 check/balance that's actually particularly good! (I mean, I guess there by sheer scope might be one... but I can't think of one anyhow).
- hawkice 6y ago
  >Seriously, name 1 check/balance that's actually particularly good! The person in charge with executing the law is different from the people in charge of crafting the laws to be executed.
stefan_ 6y ago
Well, when it is not used to cover up massive federal government misconduct making a mockery of "checks and balances" - think Watergate, torture and spies.
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
> The pardon doesn't do anything to address systemic problems in the justice system Of course. If the laws are rotten it's the court's job to tell the legislature don't do that.

mwigdahl 6y ago

It's not intended to address systemic problems in the justice system. That is the province of the legislature.

beervirus 6y ago

The pardon power—for federal crimes only—also comes from a time when there just weren’t very many federal crimes. The framers did not predict the explosion of 18 USC that we’ve seen in the last century.

briandear 6y ago
Which is probably an apt statement on the overgrowth of the federal government. The 10th Amendment has been so twisted and bent as to almost be unrecognizable.

BurningFrog 6y ago

It's meant to address individual problems, not systemic ones. Though I agree calling it a "check & balance" is pretentious. It's at best an instrument for mercy. Of course it can be abused, but if you have a bad president, that's not on the top 10 list of problems.

ortusdux 6y ago

Technically, a president could pardon all federal marijuana convictions, and announce that they will continue to do so for the remainder of their term. Basically, it could be used to address systemic problems in the federal court system. A large portion of Biden's term will probably be spent trying to return to norms, so I doubt anything like this would happen.

DevX101 6y ago
I'm for legalization of marijuana but think that's a terrible idea. This effectively makes one person the arbiter of law.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Most USA residents support marijuana legalization, and that has been the case for over a decade.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  If you have laws that are passed with racial control in mind, such as our drug laws, then mass pardoning is an act of justice and not someone becoming the arbiter of law.
  - jshevek 6y ago
    > If [criteria], then mass pardoning is an act of justice and not someone becoming the arbiter of law. I dont understand your comment. Are you thinking that acts of justice, by definition, cannot also be the product of a person becoming an arbiter of law? That you perceive a decision as just doesn't change whether a person might or might not be acting as an arbiter of law.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    Consider the alternative: a president who announces they will blanket pardon all white people and no one else.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      That’s…not the alternative. I mean, I suppose its one of a near-infinite number of possible alternatives, but I don’t see how its an even relevant one. The discussion wasn’t about someone pardoning only black people, it was about pardoning all people convicted under a particular set of laws.

emn13 6y ago

This myth that the US constitution is in any way "good" is weird. It's one of the earliest; and fortunately others leared from its mistakes. Including the US itself, when it had considerable influence in drafting the WW2 losers constitutions, which uncoincidentally are quite different from the US. Checks and balances essentially don't work in the US. The best bit is simply a decent judiciary, but that was mostly copied from the British. And even that is more poorly executed than elsewhere, due to the political nature of judicial appointees, and esp. due to the tradition of direct elections of some judges. I'd say it's arguably worse than the British model it was copied from, not because the Brits were psychic geniuses, but because of the not entirely unrelated fact that the UK model is much more open to reform; it's aged better because it's less crufty. When lead by a dangerously populist government that might be risk, of course, but so far even populists have turned out not to do too much consitutional harm - might differ in the future. It's more like: the US constitution was grand it its aims, but pretty v1.0 in its execution. It's full of unintentional (or at least unfortunate) indirect effects that didn't work out too well; such as that congress is likely to deadlock; that the constitution isn't sufficiently amendable; that its form of democracy is subject to unproportional divergence as state population sizes diverge, that by contrast adding new states is way too easy, that elections at all are in no way shape or form necessarily fair (and I don't there there has ever been a particularly free&fair election in the states) due to gerrymandering, state size disparities, imbalanced voting registration requirements, and lack of constitutional protections for elections in general; the presence of systematic biased introduced by winner-takes-all approaches; the lack of a checks on the presidency (clearly not intentional, but impeachment is a purely hypothetical check). I'm sure actual scholars could name a bunch more. Then theres the more general flaws in legal republics, such as that there no systematic mechanism for reform; laws just accumlate leaving extremely outdated wordings on the books forever, and with ever increasingly large rulebooks. Seriously, name 1 check/balance that's actually particularly good! (I mean, I guess there by sheer scope might be one... but I can't think of one anyhow).

hawkice 6y ago
>Seriously, name 1 check/balance that's actually particularly good! The person in charge with executing the law is different from the people in charge of crafting the laws to be executed.

stefan_ 6y ago

Well, when it is not used to cover up massive federal government misconduct making a mockery of "checks and balances" - think Watergate, torture and spies.

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

> The pardon doesn't do anything to address systemic problems in the justice system Of course. If the laws are rotten it's the court's job to tell the legislature don't do that.