P. S. Ruckman Jr. (Rock Valley College) has posted The Study of Mercy: What Political Scientists Know (and Don't Know) About the Pardon Power (University of St. Thomas Law Journal, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
- It is commonly suggested that the pardon power (state and federal) has received little scholarly attention, at least in the discipline of political science. This piece documents such is not the case. A wealthy of literature has been produced by political scientists and others commenting in political science journals, from a wild variety of perspectives (normative, political, historical, empirical, statistical, etc.). This piece reviews that literature and attempts to gather together its primary findings and conclusions. It concludes that there is much research to be done, and that political scientists would do well to attend to a classic goal of the discipline: cross-pollination with scholars in other disciplines and professions (law, history, sociology, etc.).
