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Article: The literary life of clemency: pardon tales in the contemporary United States.
- Article from:
- TriQuarterly
- Article date:
- December 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 TriQuarterly. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Turning a terrible action into a story is a way to distance oneself
from it, at worst a form of self-deception, at best a way to pardon
the self.
Natalie Zemon Davis
Writing in 1788, Alexander Hamilton set out to explain and defend what seemed to his contemporaries something of an anomaly in America's new constitutional scheme, namely lodging the power to grant "reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States" solely in the President of the United States. (1) That power was then and remains now one of the great prerogatives of sovereignty as well as one of the most vivid expressions of mercy. (2) Indeed the original definition of sovereignty ...