Lawfare Daily: Patronage Pardons: A Conversation with Prof. Lee Kovarsky about a Novel Feature of the Trump Administration
What are patronage pardons?
Lee Kovarsky, an endowed chair professor at the University of Texas School of Law, speaks with Senior Editor Roger Parloff about patronage pardons, the subject of his forthcoming article in the Duke Law Journal.
Patronage pardons are pardons a president issues to reward and possibly even induce criminality by political supporters. Kovarsky discusses whether the founders anticipated such pardons, gives examples of such pardons, explores how they differ from ordinary pardons, and ponders whether anything can be done to rein them in.
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Roger Parloff is a journalist based in Washington, D.C. For 12 years, he was the main legal correspondent at Fortune Magazine. His work has also been published in ProPublica, The New York Times, New York, NewYorker.com, Yahoo Finance, Air Mail, IEEE Spectrum, Inside, Legal Affairs, Brill’s Content, and others. An attorney who no longer practices, he is the author of "Triple Jeopardy," a book about an Arizona death penalty case. He is a senior editor at Lawfare.
Lee Kovarsky is the Bryant Smith Chair in Law at the University of Texas, where he also co-directs the school's Capital Punishment Center. He has litigated Texas death penalty cases for almost twenty years.
Jen Patja is the editor of the Lawfare Podcast and Rational Security, and serves as Lawfare’s Director of Audience Engagement. Previously, she was Co-Executive Director of Virginia Civics and Deputy Director of the Center for the Constitution at James Madison's Montpelier, where she worked to deepen public understanding of constitutional democracy and inspire meaningful civic participation.
