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Daily Archives: December 9, 2018

Paper – An Unappreciated Constraint on the President’s Pardon Power

Rappaport, Aaron J., An Unappreciated Constraint on the President’s Pardon Power (November 30, 2018). UC Hastings Research Paper. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3293411 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3293411. [h/t Joe Hodnicki]

“Most commentators assume that, except for the few textual limitations mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, the President’s pardon power is effectively unlimited. This paper suggests that this common view is mistaken in at least one unexpected way: Presidential pardons must satisfy a specificity requirement. That is, to be valid, the pardon must list the specific crimes insulated from criminal liability.

This claim bears a significant burden of persuasion, since it runs so counter to accepted opinion. Nonetheless, that burden can be met. The paper’s argument rests on an originalist understanding of the Constitution’s text, an approach that leaves little doubt that a specificity requirement is an implicit limitation on the President’s pardon power. It also demonstrates that the main objections to the argument – that the requirement runs contrary to the Constitutional text or historical practice – are misguided and unpersuasive.  Of course, even if a specificity requirement exists, one may wonder about its significance. After all, the requirement does not prevent a President from issuing a pardon to any person or for any crime. Nonetheless, as the paper explains, a specificity requirement may prove more powerful than it first appears. Most importantly, it both limits the scope and raises the cost of issuing pardons for criminal violations, including violations of the electoral process. In so doing, the specificity requirement serves as an unexpected ally in the fight for political accountability and in defense of the rule of law.”

As fake news flourishes UK’s fact-checkers are turning to automation to compete

Wired – Speed is everything in a post-truth world of alternative facts, online propaganda and political lies. Full Fact, the UK’s fact-checkers, are increasingly relying on technology to tackle counter-narratives: “..Since its inception in 2010, Full Fact has been parsing claims from British politicians and media, cross-referencing them with reliable data and labelling them as… Continue Reading

Congressional Oversight of Intelligence: Background and Selected Options for Further Reform

EveryCRSReport.com – Congressional Oversight of Intelligence: Background and Selected Options for Further Reform, December 4, 2018: “Prior to the establishment of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) in 1976 and 1977, respectively, Congress did not take much interest in conducting oversight of the Intelligence Community… Continue Reading

Robert Crown Law Library preserves stories of women legal pioneers

Sharon Driscoll – Stanford News:  “In the last half-century, women in law have made huge strides. But women who came before them faced huge hurdles—and many of them overcame those hurdles, making history by attending law school and succeeding in the profession against the odds. BROOKSLEY BORN, JD ’64, BA ’61, and Linda Ferren, executive… Continue Reading

Study Shows Reading Remediation Improves Children’s Reading Skills and Positively Alters Brain Tissue

“Carnegie Mellon University scientists Timothy Keller and Marcel Just have uncovered the first evidence that intensive instruction to improve reading skills in young children causes the brain to physically rewire itself, creating new white matter that improves communication within the brain. As the researchers report today in the journal Neuron, [Timothy A. Keller, Marcel Adam… Continue Reading

CDC data – Large cities still segregated even as nation becoming more diverse

Washington Post: “…Even as the United States becomes increasingly diverse, neighborhood segregation patterns persist in large urban areas, including in the Washington metro region, according to five-year trend data from the Census Bureau. Segregation has remained most entrenched between black and white residents, while segregation between whites and Hispanics and whites and Asians is more… Continue Reading

The long, tortured quest to make Google unbiased

The Verge – Can a search engine ever be meaningfully neutral: “[December 11, 2018], Sundar Pichai will try to reassure Congress that Google’s search engine isn’t rigged. The Google CEO is testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday [The Hearing is titled – Transparency & Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use and… Continue Reading