Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 1 of 1
Full-Text Articles in Law
Prosecutorial Discretion Power At Its Zenith: The Power To Protect Liberty, Peter L. Markowitz
Prosecutorial Discretion Power At Its Zenith: The Power To Protect Liberty, Peter L. Markowitz
Articles
On November 20, 2014, President Obama, frustrated by congressional inaction on immigration, announced an ambitious and potentially transformative prosecutorial discretion policy to forego the deportations of millions of low priority undocumented immigrants. That announcement immediately sparked legal challenges, which quickly wound their way to the Supreme Court, and a nationwide debate about the limits of the President’s prosecutorial discretion authority. President Obama’s actions are part of a larger trend whereby modern presidents have increasingly used robust assertions of prosecutorial discretion powers to achieve policy goals that they could not realize through legislation.
There are clear dangers in allowing a president …