A WORD ABOUT PARDONS

With all the attention being given to Bill Clinton's pardons on his last
day in office, it is important to note that this authority is provided
expressly in the Constitution, and the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld it
again and again.

Presidents often explain their pardons in patriotic terms: James Madison
pardoned Jean Lafitte and his fellow Barataria pirates, because they helped
save New Orleans from the British in the War of 1812. (Lafitte returned to
his trade after the war, preying mostly on Spanish ships.) Gerald Ford
announced that he would pardon Richard Nixon for the good of the country:
"My conscience tells me it is my duty, not merely to proclaim domestic
tranquillity but to use every means that I have to insure it." When George
Herbert Walker Bush granted clemency for six defendants in Iran-Contra, he
explained that "the common denominator of their motivation whether their
actions were right or wrong was patriotism." Anticipating the widespread
criticism that followed that Bush pardoned the men to avoid a trial in
which his own role in Iran-Contra might be explored he tried to
preemptively dismiss it. "No impartial person has seriously suggested that
my own role in this matter is legally questionable," he wrote.

Department of Justice data on pardons is incomplete, but since I934, there
appears to be little difference between Democratic and Republican
presidents in terms of their generosity, according to political-science
professor P.S. Ruckman Jr., of Rock Valley College in Rockford, Illinois,
who is compiling data on presidential pardons. Still, people seem to think
a Democratic president will be a softer touch. In the twelve Reagan-Bush
years, the White House typically received less than 200 clemency requests -
but when Clinton came in, that number jumped to more than 500, and it
topped out at more than a thousand last year. To most of these petitioners,
Clinton was a disappointment. For all the brouhaha, it turns out that he
ranks near dead center twentieth out of forty-one presidents in his
willingness to issue pardons.