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The article focuses on the recent reforms to Minnesota's clemency laws, which aim to improve the efficiency, fairness, and effectiveness of the pardon and commutation process. It highlights significant changes such as the establishment of a Clemency Review Commission, the removal of the unanimous vote requirement, increased meeting frequency, and automatic expungement of pardoned records.

The proposed amnesty law for Catalonia presented in the context of the investiture of President Pedro Sánchez has raised a great stir in both the political and academic fields, where we can find opposing positions. Some consider no amnesty fits within the Spanish constitution Constitution; other authors advocate for its constitutionality, athough the specific proposal now presented is unconstitutional; and finally, there are those who believe that both the amnesty, in general, and the proposal submited, in particular, fit into the Constitution. Who is right? Does the Spanish Constitution forbid any kind of amnesty? And, specifically, does the proposed amnesty law fit into the Magna Carta? The main objective of this essay is to answer these questions, and that is why international experience, Spanish historical constitutionalism, as well as the most current doctrine and jurisprudence are analyzed.

This article is devoted to the historical and legal study of the origin and evolution of the institution of pardon in Ukraine and the European Union Member States. The author analyses the emergence of pardon in ancient Rome, its social and political role. The author points to the existence of three main forms of pardon in the Roman Empire: abolition, intercession and indulgence. The author emphasises the impact of the reception of Roman law and the growing role of the Roman Catholic Church on the establishment of the right of pardon as an element of the absolute power of the monarch in medieval Europe. Attention is drawn to the established tradition of pardoning convicted persons on the occasion of significant religious or state events. The author points out that the right to pardon is legally enshrined in the legislative collection 'Siete Partidas' in the Kingdom of Spain and to the modern subjects of pardon in the said State. The author analyses the evolution of the pardon procedure, in particular, with regard to the participation of not only the head of state, but also other subjects, including the Minister of Justice in order to ensure a greater level of political neutrality. The features of pardon in medieval Italy, the transfer of this right from the city councils to the monarch along with the establishment of the seigniorial regime are highlighted. The author also describes the practice of using pardoning charters and letters in medieval France, Portugal, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and Italy. The article outlines the stages of development of the legal institution of pardon in the Ukrainian lands during the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Cossack Hetmanate. The paper analyses the procedure for granting pardons in Ukraine during the Soviet occupation, namely, the vesting of this right not in a sole head of state, but in a collective body - the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The article highlights the right to pardon granted to the President of Ukraine after the restoration of independence, which is enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine. The author reveals the special role of the institution of pardon for persons sentenced to life imprisonment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution imposes on the United States government the duty to "guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." Many in the legal community have written on the impacts the Guarantee Clause may have on both the legislative and judicial branches. Yet few have discussed what effect, if any, the Guarantee Clause may have on the executive branch. This Note will examine the scope of the presidential pardon power and inquire whether a partial application to collateral consequences of state criminal convictions can be authorized under the Guarantee Clause of the Constitution. Specifically, this Note asks whether the conditional right to vote based on felony status can be minimized, or even eliminated, through a broad understanding of the pardon power and the President's duty to guarantee a "republican" form of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like many metropolises in the global South, unregulated/informal (kaçak) construction is not an exception in Istanbul, but rather the norm. Most recently, in a 2018 building amnesty dubbed as 'the Building Peace' (İmar Barışı), 1.8 million kaçak structures in Istanbul were pardoned by the government. Given the ubiquity of building amnesties of this sort and their failure to prevent unregulated construction, this article questions what role the concept of kaçak plays if it fails to mark a boundary between formal and informal. By tracing the long history of building amnesties and examining how Istanbulites have partook in the 2018 Building Peace, I suggest that kaçak is an ongoing conversation on value in the city. Contrary to mainstream accounts that reduce building amnesties to mere populism, I understand kaçak, a la Ayşe Buğra (1998), as an important component of a larger urban moral economy through which conceptions of justice, reciprocity, public amenity, and good life are constantly negotiated. Thinking through the negotiations over kaçak allows us to see a multi-valent urban moral economy, illustrated in the article through the example of Kuzguncuk neighborhood where ultimate legalization of kaçak housing is contingent upon resident's consent to an urban renewal project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life without parole (LWOP) sentences are politically popular in the United States because, on their face, they claim to hold prisoners incarcerated until they die, with zero prospect of release via the regularized channel of parole. However, this view is procedurally shortsighted. After parole there is generally another remedial option for lessening or abrogating punishment: executive clemency via pardons and commutations. Increasingly, U.S. legal jurisdictions also provide for the possibility of compassionate release for lifers, usually granted by a parole board. On paper, pardon, commutation, and compassionate release are thus direct challenges to the claim that an LWOP sentence will inevitably and invariably lead to the prisoner's death while incarcerated. Few previous studies, however, have examined the finality of LWOP empirically. In this Article, I present original empirical data on clemency covering the period 1990-2021 in order to investigate the relationship between LWOP sentences and the release mechanisms of executive clemency and compassionate release in both state and federal cases. Ultimately, the results of this research reaffirm the finality of LWOP in the United States, despite the availability, on paper, of at least three potential release procedures. Only a handful of LWOP prisoners have received commutation or pardon from U.S. presidents, state governors, or pardons boards. Compassionate release has been granted almost as rarely. That said, some demographics tend to have benefited more than others. The findings presented within this Article are relevant not only to domestic clemency and end-of-life release policy but also to litigation dealing with a "right to hope" as a component of human dignity, and to the academic debate over LWOP as a global replacement for the death penalty and a form of "extreme" punishment of its own accord. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces some of the regulations on pardon that were in force in the nineteenth century, as reminiscences of the Ancien Régime, to draw attention to the fact that it was not until 1870 that the regulation of the institution of pardon was approved, which served as a legal framework to process the pardon of a mayor of Puerto Rico, who deserved certain favorable treatment by the government authorities despite the serious electoral crimes he had committed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The President of the Republic of Macedonia, Gjorge Ivanov in 2016 pardoned 56 individuals. Some of them were pardoned more than once (the former Minister for Transport and Communications was pardoned 16 times, the former Minister for Interior was pardoned 13 times etc.). Most of the pardoned persons were politicians or their close collaborators. The President’s explanations for the pardons were that he sought to help the country overcome political crisis, that the country had been facing for almost two years. This event raised many questions about the constitutional aspects of the pardons in North Macedonia, which will be analyzed in this paper. The analysis show that these pardons were unlawful and the presidential power was misused. Because similar questions about misuse of presidential pardons were debated in USA under Trump rule, this paper will also make comparisons of the (mis)use of presidential power to grant pardons in North Macedonia and in the USA. At the end the paper will discuss the possible legal solutions for overcoming the misuse of this power of the President of North Macedonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Bouhouth is the property of London Research & Consulting Center and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Through a reflection on the ambiguous facets of Holocaust oblivion that has lasted for generations, the article examines how the official politics of memory in France instrumentalized historical oblivion as an ideological tool. To this end, the essay analyzes Fabrice Humbert's 2009 novel, L'Origine de la violence, to examine the essential role of literature in pinpointing the dynamics of memory and forgetting while exploring the ambiguity of oblivion, pardon and reparation. The unveiled family secret is explored as an allegory of the cryptic national history that reflects the amnesia imposed after the Vichy regime (1940-1944) by the 'resistancialisme' promulgated in the post-war period in France; amnesia decreed years later by President Georges Pompidou when he pardoned the French war criminal Paul Touvier in 1972. This politics of forgetting comforted a generation of citizens implicated in collaboration during WWII, resulting in conflicts with the younger generations, as portrayed in Humbert's text. Keywords: memory, forgotten, secret, generations, pardon, reparation, politics, Vichy, Shoah, Holocaust., La plupart des gens s'adonnent au mirage d'une double croyance : ils croient a la perennite de la memoire (des hommes, des choses, des actes, des nations) et a la [...]