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Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

Time to remove the pardon powder. Has it achieved anything productive in the last 100 years?

I think it's been used properly in a lot of instances, especially when you consider that federal law can quickly become out-of-step with modern sensibilities, so being able to relieve those harmed by laws flawed under contemporary standards is important. There's probably a better way of handling that, but it's one instance where the power of presidential and governors' pardons have been applied appropriately.

> I think it's been used properly in a lot of instances, especially when you consider that federal law can quickly become out-of-step with modern sensibilities, so being able to relieve those harmed by laws flawed under contemporary standards is important.

No, that is exactly what we don't need. When law becomes out of step with modern sensibilities, the law needs to be changed. Precisely the problem we currently have is that we have become too accustomed to dealing with a sort of "shadow law" system where the way things actually work is not the way they're supposed to work according to the law. That is a recipe for confusion, bias, favoritism, and inequity. What we need is a system of laws that actually lets the people fix things when they are broken instead of patching around them. (This is, in my view, a byproduct of other aspects of our legal system, in particular the grossly over-restrictive process for amending the constitution.)

That's not really what I meant. Just because a law is repealed or changed, doesn't mean the people who were sentenced to prison because of its original form will receive revised sentences.

You can revise their sentences with law as well.

At the very least, it seems obvious there should be an asterick on the pardon power of, "you can't use it to pardon your employees/staff." Or pardon people for things they did under your direction/purview.

Are you referring to cases where the person already served their time or are long dead?

Like a pardon for someone convicted of being gay in the early 20th century?

These are symbolic and provide no practical relief. Losing this to stop all pardons would be worth it to me

it's written into the Constitution very explicitly. and it's a really bad time to hold a Constitutional Convention.

I'm not actually convinced that now would be a terrible time to hold a constitutional convention. Yes, it would be messy, but the nature of the ratification requirements (3/4 of all states) means that nothing could make it through without essentially unanimous consent of the country as a whole.

While we are at it we can add ranked voting and a vote of no confidence (maybe initiated by congress and voted on by the states or people).

To remove the presidential pardon power, you'd need to [amend the Constitution][1]. Getting [two thirds of both Houses of Congress][2] to pass any amendment in the foreseeable future seems highly unlikely if not downright inconceivable.

[1]: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artII-S2-C1-3...

[2]: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artV-1/ALDE_0...

Why?

It doesn't affect the power of congress so why would they care?

It's a bizarre and archaic power, which has been abused by presidents from both parties.

It's also clearly incompatible with most (all?) modern definitions of democracy.

Truman and Carter used it well[1][2].

[1]: https://www.newspapers.com/article/news-and-record-truman-ex...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_4483

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