# Ex parte Garland Reconstruction-era Supreme Court decision, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 333, holding that a congressional test oath could not be used to bar a pardoned former Confederate official from practising law in the federal courts. Augustus Garland, an Arkansas lawyer who had served in the Confederate Congress, had received a full pardon from President Andrew Johnson. The case is the foundational American statement of how broad the clemency power is. The Court described the power as unlimited except in cases of impeachment, extending to every offence known to the law, and exercisable either before legal proceedings are taken or after conviction and judgment — which is the source of the modern rule that a pardon may issue **before any charge is filed**. It also contains the much-quoted (and much-qualified) language that a pardon "blots out of existence the guilt" of the offender, a characterisation later decisions have narrowed considerably; compare [[Burdick v. United States]] (1915), which reads acceptance of a pardon as carrying an imputation of guilt. Garland himself later served as U.S. Attorney General under Grover Cleveland. **Status:** stub — expand with the companion case *Cummings v. Missouri*, the bill-of-attainder and ex post facto holdings, and the later narrowing of the "blots out guilt" language. ## See also - [[Pardon Power]] · [[The Pardon and Clemency Pipeline]] - [[Burdick v. United States]] — the acceptance-and-imputation case - [[How a Case Reaches the Supreme Court]] · [[Federal Judiciary Tree]]