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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   11350 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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Precedent in almost all of them is that the power is used extremely rarely, as an event, and often subject to the intense scrutiny of a leader’s own allies. Lastly, the power typically sits with a ceremonial president with no real political power besides, in some cases, the ability to call an election.

Precedent in almost all of them is that the power is used extremely rarely, as an event, and often subject to the intense scrutiny of a leader’s own allies.

Investigating each and every country would be a bit of a pain in the ass, as they don't exactly share the number of pardons on Eurostat, but my impression is that pardons are seen as completely mundane and boring. I'd eyeball-estimate something on the order of 100+ each year in any mid-sized country.

A wholesale pardon of deplorables would indeed cause quite a stir in Europe, but that has nothing to do with pardons themselves being haram.

Germany keeps the identities of those pardoned a secret, but a recent court case revealed that the number totalled 15 during Steinmeier's five-year tenure (2017-2022), or 3 a year.

Looks like it might be going out of fashion.

German wiki

In 2006, around 4,000 applications for clemency were submitted in North Rhine-Westphalia; the clemency offices of the regional courts, the Ministry of Justice and the Minister President decided in favour of every tenth application.[14] Pardons granted by the Federal President are secret and the Office of the Federal President does not provide any information on positive or negative clemency decisions by the Federal Presidents.[15][16][17]

From July 1, 1974 until the end of Joachim Gauck's term of office on March 18, 2017, 898 disciplinary pardon decisions and 97 criminal pardon decisions were made by the Federal Presidents.[18]

Some French website

As a consequence of the end of the use of collective amnesty laws and the lesser consideration given to requests for pardons, the figures have fallen considerably since the mid-1990s, and more precisely since 2011. Indeed, since Jacques Chirac's election as President of the Republic in 1995, the number of pardons granted has fallen, to around one hundred or less per year, compared with between two and seven hundred the previous decade. In 2007, the year of Nicolas Sarkozy's election in May, the figures halved, from 98 pardons granted in 2006 to 43 in 2007, then 94 in 2008, 28 in 2009 and 61 in 2010. From 2011 onwards, when 19 requests will be examined, the figures will continue to fall. In fact, no requests were granted in 2014 or 2017.

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