Opinion ID: 2310847
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Post-Civil War Supreme Court Decisions

Text: During and after the Civil War, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson exercised their pardoning authority extensively by granting individual amnesties to supporters of the rebellion. [7] These executive measures were necessary to prevent the bringing of treason charges against former Confederate soldiers and sympathizers. William F. Duker, The President's Power to Pardon: A Constitutional History, 18 WM. & MARY L.REV. 475, 510-512 (1977). As a result, several cases raising issues of first impression about the scope of the President's pardoning power found their way to the Supreme Court. The first such case, and the one that most closely resembles the case before us, was Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333, 18 L.Ed. 366 (1866). Garland was an attorney from Arkansas who had been admitted to the Supreme Court bar in 1860. During the Civil War, he served in the Congress of the Confederacy. In January 1865 Congress passed legislation, later implemented by a Supreme Court rule, requiring that in order to practice law in any federal court, all attorneys must take a loyalty oath stating that they had never given aid or comfort to any enemy of the United States. Shortly after this law was enacted, Garland received a full pardon for his actions during the Civil War. Since he could not take the required oath because of his service in the Confederate Congress, he petitioned the Supreme Court for permission to continue practicing as an attorney, arguing inter alia that the pardon relieved him of any obligation to take the oath. Basing its decision in part on a broad reading of the President's pardoning authority, a majority of the Court granted Garland's petition. In defining the scope of the pardoning power, the Court declared: A pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offence and the guilt of the offender; and when the pardon is full, it releases the punishment and blots out of existence the guilt, so that in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offence. If granted before conviction, it prevents any of the penalties and disabilities consequent upon conviction from attaching; if granted after conviction, it removes the penalties and disabilities, and restores him to all his civil rights; it makes him, as it were, a new man, and gives him a new credit and capacity. Id. at 380-381. To this expansive statement the Court added but a single limitation, consistent with similar restrictions on the pardoning authority of the English King. The Court cautioned that a presidential pardon, by itself, does not restore offices forfeited, or property or interests vested in others in consequence of the conviction and judgment. Id. at 381 (footnote omitted). [8] A few years later, in Carlisle v. United States, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 147, 21 L.Ed. 426 (1872), the Court once again spoke broadly in interpreting the scope and effect of a full presidential pardon. The plaintiffs in Carlisle were British subjects living in Alabama. During the Civil War, Union forces had seized sixty-five bales of cotton, belonging to them, which had been stored on a plantation there. Because the plaintiffs had provided aid and comfort to the rebellion by furnishing materials to the Confederacy for use in the manufacture of gunpowder, id. at 150, the cotton was sold and its proceeds deposited in the United States Treasury. Thereafter the plaintiffs, who had received a full pardon for their wartime activities, filed suit against the United States under the Captured and Abandoned Property Act in which they sought to recover the proceeds from the sale of the seized cotton. The Court of Claims dismissed their case because of their involvement with the Confederacy, but the Supreme Court reversed. Justice Field, writing for a unanimous Court, elaborated: It is true, the pardon and amnesty do not and cannot alter the actual fact that aid and comfort were given by the claimants, but they forever close the eyes of the court to the perception of that fact as an element in its judgment, no rights of third parties having intervened. There has been some difference of opinion among the members of the court as to cases covered by the pardon of the President, but there has been none as to the effect and operation of a pardon in cases where it applies. All have agreed that the pardon not merely releases the offender from the punishment prescribed for the offence, but that it obliterates in legal contemplation the offence itself. Id. at 151 (emphasis added). Following Garland and Carlisle, the Court in Knote v. United States, supra note 7, described a presidential pardon as an act of grace which releases the offender from all disabilities imposed by the offence, and restores to him all his civil rights. 95 U.S. at 153. Mr. Knote, like the plaintiffs in Carlisle, was the owner of property which had been confiscated by the United States because of his assistance to the Confederate cause. The property had been condemned and sold by court order, and the proceeds of the sale had been deposited in the Treasury of the United States. After Knote received a full presidential pardon, he sued for recovery of those proceeds. Justice Field, again writing for the entire Court, stated that such a pardon gives its recipient a new credit and capacity and rehabilitates him to that extent in his former position. Id. The Court nevertheless rejected his claim, holding that the pardon, by itself, did not entitle him to take money out of the Treasury because it was no longer his money: [I]f the proceeds have been paid into the treasury, the right to them has so far become vested in the United States that they can only be secured to the former owner of the property through an act of Congress. Moneys once in the treasury can only be withdrawn by an appropriation by law. However large, therefore, may be the power of pardon possessed by the President . . . it cannot touch moneys in the treasury of the United States, except expressly authorized by act of Congress. The Constitution places this restriction on the pardoning power. Id. at 154. [9] Notwithstanding this limitation, Knote stands, like its predecessors, for the proposition that a full presidential pardon has the effect of abolishing any legal disabilities flowing from the pardoned conduct. The failure of Knote's claim resulted not from any disability on his part, but from the altered status of the sale proceeds once they were deposited in the Treasury. The Supreme Court reiterated its broad interpretation of the Pardon Clause in several other cases decided in the period following the Civil War. For instance, in Osborn v. United States, 91 U.S. 474, 477, 23 L.Ed. 388 (1875), the Court declared, It is of the very essence of a pardon that it releases the offender from the consequences of his offence. Thus, although a pardon may not interfere with the private rights of third parties (such rights . . . necessarily remain as they existed previously to the grant of the pardon), the Court made clear that an unconditional pardon bars the government from penalizing the offender in any way for the conduct underlying the pardon. Hence the Court held that a forfeiture of Osborn's property ordered by a United States District Court, under an 1862 statute authorizing the confiscation of property belonging to persons giving aid and comfort to the rebellion, must be set aside because he had been pardoned for his wartime activities. Since Osborn had fulfilled all the requirements of the pardon, and since his property was still within the control of the federal court in Kansas that ordered the forfeiture [10] (unlike the situation in Knote ), the Supreme Court ruled that the property had to be restored to him. [U]nless rights of others in the property condemned have accrued, the penalty of forfeiture annexed to the commission of the offence must fall with the pardon of the offence itself. . . . Id. [11]