ABSTRACT
The theory behind the pardon power is that there are extraordinary circumstances in which the president needs to be able to set aside the law in order to serve the national interest or the interests of justice. A president may abuse that power, but the Constitution undoubtedly gives the president that power. The Court was equally ineffective in checking executive power in the case of eight Nazi saboteurs arrested in June 1942. The Supreme Court has effectively checked executive power, even in the midst of what the president at least considered an emergency. Although the Constitution placed few restrictions on the president's personal discretion to pardon, the pardon process has evolved its own legal bureaucracy. Pursuant to the president's executive order, the military forcibly removed about 110,000 Japanese resident aliens and Japanese Americans from their homes and relocated them to internment camps in the interior of the country.
