Clemency Often Used in the Past to Remedy Injustice

     In a recent article in the Chicago Tribune, law Professor Daniel Kobil examined historical uses of the power of clemency:

 Comprehensive remissions of punishment to remedy systemic flaws are. . .   sometimes required. It is not unusual for courts to make constitutional rulings that have the effect of invalidating convictions across the board. The U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 decision in Furman vs. Georgia, effectively invalidated every death sentence then pending nationwide. And other executives have found it necessary to use clemency to correct problems common to an entire class. Thomas Jefferson, shortly after becoming president, discharged every person being punished under the Alien and Sedition Act, which he considered an unconstitutional law. In a letter to Abigail Adams, he explained that he did this "in every instance, without asking what the offenders had done, or against whom they had offended, but whether the pains they were suffering were inflicted under the [invalid] law." President Andrew Johnson following the Civil War, and Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter after the Vietnam conflict, granted amnesty to broad classes of individuals who had broken wartime laws.