Your comment about the validity of pardons issued by an impeached president seems misplaced. The pardon clause reads "...and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in *Cases* of impeachment". [emphasis supplied]. It does not read "in case he is impeached" or words to that effect.
The clause simply means that the president cannot exercise clemency to prevent impeachments (nor their consequent trials) to go forward. This is a permanent, not temporal, limitation on the pardon power.
Judge Story (quoted by you) confirms this by elaborating on the rationale for the bar on impeachments, saying "[b]ut if the power of pardons extended *to* impeachments, it is obvious, that the latter may become wholly inefficient, as a protection against political offenses. [emphasis supplied]. Absent this limitation, Story correctly argues, a president could prevent any political trial, not just his (an impeachment and trial) via a pardon.
The original version of the clause at the convention read "He shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons, but his pardon shall not be pleadable in bar of an impeachment". Put in another way, a person could not assert a pardon as an affirmative defense in an impeachment trial.
This does not seem to suggest the Framers intended a temporal presidential disability in his pardon power, but a permanent one. He cannot pardon impeachments, period.
The current version of the clause would appear to be an awkward way to create the "temporal limit" on the pardon power you suggest. Further, the evil it would seek to cure seems to be discussed nowhere in the convention.
I'd love to those pardons revoked, but I read it the way as Orlando Gotay
Your comment about the validity of pardons issued by an impeached president seems misplaced. The pardon clause reads "...and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in *Cases* of impeachment". [emphasis supplied]. It does not read "in case he is impeached" or words to that effect.
The clause simply means that the president cannot exercise clemency to prevent impeachments (nor their consequent trials) to go forward. This is a permanent, not temporal, limitation on the pardon power.
Judge Story (quoted by you) confirms this by elaborating on the rationale for the bar on impeachments, saying "[b]ut if the power of pardons extended *to* impeachments, it is obvious, that the latter may become wholly inefficient, as a protection against political offenses. [emphasis supplied]. Absent this limitation, Story correctly argues, a president could prevent any political trial, not just his (an impeachment and trial) via a pardon.
The original version of the clause at the convention read "He shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons, but his pardon shall not be pleadable in bar of an impeachment". Put in another way, a person could not assert a pardon as an affirmative defense in an impeachment trial.
This does not seem to suggest the Framers intended a temporal presidential disability in his pardon power, but a permanent one. He cannot pardon impeachments, period.
The current version of the clause would appear to be an awkward way to create the "temporal limit" on the pardon power you suggest. Further, the evil it would seek to cure seems to be discussed nowhere in the convention.
Orlando Gotay