Dennis Lytton has an article at "Liberal Currents" arguing for what he calls a 'reform' of the presidential pardon power. This is a grotesquely bad idea. A few points.
(1) When people, right or left, make arguments like this, it is always important to make clear what their actual argument is, however they may dress it up. They want to be able to be more vindictive to political opponents. Lytton does everything but admit this outright; all of his argument is a complaint that people to whom he is politically opposed are not being punished hard enough because they are getting pardons and reprieves. He wants to end this, and be able to punish them more harshly. Indeed, he goes farther; he doesn't just want to end the pardoning and reprieving of people he doesn't like, he wants to revoke their pardons and reprieves. He wants to undo any mercy extended to them. But he is not advocating a general consensus view; it is a very explicitly partisan one.
There are proposals to reform the pardon power that are worth taking seriously. Some states have a pardon-board process that, if done properly (it is not always done properly), can make it easier for people to get pardons and reprieves for recognized categories of cases, which supplements or organizes the governor's pardon power. There are some arguments that can be made for something like this. But one of the reasons why the head of the executive branch generally gets the pardon power is that the pardon power is something that requires definite decision (not compromise and legislative horse-trading) but also requires the capacity to make discretionary decisions that take into account the overall political situation by someone who is beholden ultimately to the people and not to political appointment. Lytton, of course, is objecting precisely to cases that involve the latter, and wants to eliminate it entirely. This is effectively trying to find a way to break people under the law even if large portions of American society are sympathetic to them. That is, at minimum, placing an immense amount of trust in Congress to pass only moderate and reasonable laws, and prosecutors to exercise their own inevitable discretion in enforcement of the law in moderate and apolitical ways.
(2) What is worse, Lytton does not actually propose a reform of the pardon power. The proposed amendment does give Congress the power to establish by joint resolution an independent body to grant pardons and reprieves and the power to grant by joint resolution pardons and reprieves. (Joint resolutions, except those involving proposals to amend the Constitution, usually require the Presidential signature or a veto override, because they usually just work like laws; Lytton's very defective amendment does not say which is relevant here, although presumably he wants Congress to be able to pardon and reprieve without the President vetoing it -- but maybe not, who knows?) This, first of all, gives Congress the power to make arbitrary exceptions to its own laws, but, second, notably does not require that Congress do either of these things.
That is to say, Lytton is not 'reforming' the pardon power; he is making it massively harder for anyone to get pardons and reprieves. Congress of course doesn't have to establish an independent body to grant pardons and reprieves; it doesn't have to give any pardons itself, and giving pardons itself requires exactly the same political negotiation and horsetrading it takes to pass a law. But Congress (unlike the President) does not have much incentive for making it easy to get pardons to the laws passed by Congress. Every pardon suggests a possible defect in a law; and Lytton is giving it entirely to either the legislators themselves or people who are definitely subordinate to the legislators.
But under our current regime, for every one of the news-grabbing dubious pardons, there are literally dozens of pardons and reprieves for entirely reasonable circumstances. And even so, there are many cases that arguably should be heard. In a serious pardon reform, pardons should be easier for ordinary people to get, not harder. Lytton's proposal provides no mechanism that gives any reasonable guarantee of a better system. We're all at the mercy of whether Congress comes up with a reasonable set of procedures. This is not a reform but a degradation of a key power mitigating the sledgehammer of the laws.
(3) The proposed change for the pardon power itself is bad. But his proposal for a process to revoke pardons and reprieves is morally atrocious. It applies to any pardon or reprieve given under Presidential power at any time, and pardons or reprieves are explicitly defined as "pardons, conditional pardons, commutations of sentence, conditional commutations of sentence, remissions of fines and forfeitures, respites, and amnesties." People who were restored the right to vote in their state because their felony status was pardoned could have it stripped away again. Immigrants given amnesties and pardons for irregularities in documentation could suddenly be deported. People whose fines were forgiven could be re-fined. People trusting the explicit word of their government that their punishment was over, backed by the presumed rock-solid status of the Constitution itself, could find themselves suddenly punished. And all of this can be done arbitrarily. This is not just unmerciful, it is unjust and dishonorable.
(4) And why are we to rip up by its roots an entire clemency system? All to hurt a few very specific people who got pardons and reprieves. This is an abusive way to think about government.
