Amherst professor Austin Sarat examines two recent Trump administration actions—the $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund and a DOJ settlement granting the president and his family immunity from tax enforcement—arguing that both are unconstitutional and morally indefensible. Professor Sarat argues that the tax immunity arrangement amounts to an unconstitutional self-pardon by proxy, while the Anti-Weaponization Fund violates the First Amendment, equal protection, separation of powers, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s explicit prohibition on compensating insurrectionists. He further argues that courts and the public must resist both actions before Trump normalizes using governmental power for personal benefit.

University of Chicago Law School professor emeritus Albert W. Alschuler examines President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden, analyzing three aspects of the pardon: preventing future prosecution, setting aside convictions, and eliminating potential prison sentences. Professor Alschuler argues that while blocking future prosecution was justified given the threat of political persecution, and limiting Hunter’s sentence could be defended despite breaking a promise, completely erasing his convictions was unjustifiable.

UF Levin College of Law professor Neil H. Buchanan argues that it is not only constitutional but necessary to review and nullify corrupt presidential pardons, including many of those granted by former President Trump. Professor Buchanan debunks the misconception that the presidential pardon power is “unlimited” as journalists have assumed, based on the language and context of the Pardon Clause and that of a seminal Supreme Court case interpreting it.

Austin Sarat—Associate Provost, Associate Dean of the Faculty, and William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College—comments on President Trump’s commutation of the sentence of Roger Stone. Sarat observes the pattern of Trump using his exclusive power of clemency to help those who, like Stone, committed crimes that show disdain for the legal process, and he argues that Trump seems “incapable of grasping the meaning of mercy or of understanding its place in a decent society.”

Guest columnist and former US Congressman Brad Miller argues in favor of limits on the president’s power to pardon criminal contempt of court. Miller describes two US Supreme Court precedents on point and explains why circumstances today are radically different from what the Court in those decisions envisioned.