Rachel Barkow: Did Trump and Biden Turn Pardons Into a Corrupt Joke?
Presidential pardons have become a tool of favoritism and politics.
This week's guest is Rachel Barkow, a professor of law at New York University and the author of the book Justice Abandoned: How the Supreme Court Ignored the Constitution and Enabled Mass Incarceration, which was just released this month.
Barkow and Reason's Billy Binion talked about the importance of the presidential pardon power—which is a controversial topic these days, after former President Joe Biden used it to preemptively pardon Anthony Fauci and members of his own family, and President Donald Trump used it to pardon January 6 defendants, some of whom were convicted of assaulting law enforcement. They also discussed Barkow's view that certain Supreme Court precedents around criminal justice are alarming for anyone who cares about the Constitution and individual liberty. Finally, they chatted about what it was like for her to clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia—as a Democrat.
0:00 — Introduction
1:03 — Presidential pardon power under Biden and Trump
9:35 — Biden's "clumsy" end-of-term pardons
13:03 — Trump's January 6 pardons
18:55 — Historical context for pardon power
24:20 — Philip Esformes' pardon limbo
30:07 — Ford's commission on Vietnam War draft dodgers
33:15 — Pardon power and the death penalty
37:57 — Barkow's new book, Justice Abandoned
41:45 — Coercive plea bargaining
57:17 — "Repeat offenders" in the news
1:05:18 — Barkow's clerkship with Scalia
1:15:42 — The biggest misconception about the Supreme Court
- Video Editor: Ian Keyser
