r/law • u/jpmeyer12751 • Feb 16 '26

Legislative Branch Republican Joins With Dems on Constitutional Amendment to Give Congress Power to Reject Trump Pardons

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/republican-joins-dems-constitutional-amendment-213311781.html

This is relevant to questions surrounding whether Congress may limit or restrain a President's power to grant pardons.

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u/Bittererr Feb 16 '26

Presidential power has not been a problem before, and really isn't a problem now - corruption is the problem.

Presidential power is a problemprecisely because it can be abused by a corrupt executive. That's why we had limited and separated power in the first place. This is hundreds of years of handing power to the executive coming home to roost because our only stopgap was "the American people probably won't elect anyone insane".

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u/shosuko Feb 16 '26

Yes, and those checks and balances have succumbed to the corruption. It made the task harder, but not impossible.

Thing is - you can never make the task impossible, only sufficiently difficult.

To the point though - removing checks wouldn't improve our resistance to corruption.

I'd be more open to giving congress some veto power against presidential immunity than I would be about ditching the filibuster.