Grace and justice: Sovereignty and exceptionality

Authors

  • Alfonso Ruiz Miguel

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18042/cepc/redc.113.01

Keywords:

Mercy, justice, sovereignty, excepcionality, extraordinarity, exception, generality.

Abstract

The essay situates the field of traditional justification of pardon in the idea of sovereignty and in two essential attributes of that idea: mercy and justice. These two notions are in opposition in a criminal context due to the essentially motiveless character of mercy, which, as the notion of sovereignty that supports it, seems to be in open conflict with the most basic requirements of the rule of law. The study also deals with the ambiguous notion of exceptionality, which can be understood either as extraordinarity or as exception, in order to analyse the notion of generality in pardons and to conclude defending the need and the possibility of a limitative and specially restrictive legal regulation of the right of pardon.

Issue

Section

STUDIES