Pardon Power REPORT: Obama's First Term

Interested readers can now see a draft of PardonPower's report on the first term of President Obama. This is the second of what we hope will be a long string of such reports, which provide new and original data, easily available to all readers, simply for the asking. The Report will be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. Chicago, IL (April 14, 2013). The abstract reads as follows:

This paper provides a statistical examination and final overview of the pardon power as exercised in the first term of Barack Obama. In addition to aggregate data on applications (new and pending), pardons, commutations, and denials, original data is presented on individual applicants including: individual offenses, years (length of time) between offenses and clemency, seasonal clemency, geographic distribution of recipients and presence or absence of legal representation. The Obama administration is then placed in the context of history and, where appropriate, compared with more recent administrations. Finally, some attention is given to clemency-related issues which are likely to loom large in Obama’s second term and, perhaps, the terms of future presidents. 

Download the paper from SSRN here. Or, if you are not an SSRN member, you can download the .pdf file here.