Can Congress issue a legislative pardon? Suppose that the President did not want to pardon someone, but Congress passed a private bill excusing a person from a violation of a law. Suppose this bill became law (either through inaction of the President or a veto override). Can Congress essentially pardon a violation of law through legislation?
Can Congress essentially pardon a violation of law through legislation? Yes. Congress has the power to retroactivity reduce the sentence for a crime for which someone has been sentenced. This was done most recently in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 that reduced excessive penalties for crack cocaine relative to powder cocaine. In the same way, when the death penalty is legislatively repealed in a state, the death sentences of the handful of people on death row at the time is often commuted legislatively. While Congress cannot impose criminal penalties on someone legislatively, which is a Bill of Attainder and constitutionally prohibited, it can single out people for special treatment in a private bill, which is a constitutional exercise of legislative power at the federal level (not every state allows private bills to be enacted due to Progressive era reforms to state constitutions). For example, private bills often eliminate the collateral effects of a criminal conviction upon a person, there is even a standard procedure for doing so, which is functionally equivalent to a Presidential pardon of the crime for that purposes (the vast majority of Presidential pardons are issued after the person convicted has served the sentence for the crime). A private bill cannot impair contract or property rights, which would be a prohibited ex post facto law. But no one other than the federal government has a legally protected interest in keeping someone incarcerated or otherwise punishing them for a crime. Crimes are prosecuted in the name of the People and victims of crimes do not have legal rights in those proceedings except as created by statute. So, this would not be an ex post facto bill or a taking governed by the Fifth Amendment for takings of property interests. And, Congress may, by legislation, determine what the federal government will do in essentially all cases where it is not expressly prohibited from doing so (some argue that there is a minimum of federal authority vested exclusively in the President in the area of foreign affairs and military affairs, but that exclusivity of power does not extend to domestic criminal justice). Basically, anything that Congress could do for everyone via a public bill, it can do for someone in particular via a private bill, unless a specific constitutional prohibition applies, and there is no such prohibition when it comes to relieving someone from a sentence or the collateral effects of a criminal conviction prospectively via a private bill. This isn't exactly equivalent to a Presidential pardon or commutation, but it is very close to one in practical effect. For a fuller, but somewhat outdated treatment of the issue, you can read this 1939 article in the California Law Review which acknowledged that legislative pardons were possible under existing law. This said, government prosecutors routinely fervently oppose any retroactive criminal legislation that reduces punishment, particularly via private laws (although some countries, such as France, have constitutional requirements to retroactively reduce the sentences of anyone currently serving time for a crime whose punishment is legislatively reduced prospectively). Private bills that constitute legislative pardons are very rare. A 2011 law review article recounts how the tool of the legislative pardon (in parallel with the executive pardon which is also used much less frequency) has fallen into disuse. Part of the decline is due to the adoption of the right to appeal from a trial court criminal convictions which did not exist in the federal system until the 1890s. Until then, the only judicial relief available from a federal criminal conviction was via a writ of habeas corpus, and that was available only on very limited grounds such as a lack of jurisdiction to conduct the trial, or the non-existence of the crime of conviction. Conviction by a jury in a court with jurisdiction of a constitutionally permissible crime was an absolute defense to the extent of the sentence imposed to a habeas corpus petition at that time. (As a footnote, the term "private bill" can be confusing. In many governments with a parliamentary system, a "private bill" means one sponsored by an individual legislator rather than the prime minister and his or her cabinet. But, in U.S. terminology, a "private bill" refers to a bill with an effect limited to one person or a small number of persons who are either identified by name or by a very narrowly defined situation.)
In the United States, the answer depends on who is unlawfully in power. In the hypothetical you presented, the answer is probably that the law would remain valid, as Congress generally has the sole authority to pass judgment on whether to admit the elected person. A third party would not have the ability to challenge the law based on the qualifications of a lawmaker. But if we were dealing with an administrative official promulgating regulations, those rules would generally be void if that official were unlawfully appointed. That was the case in Nat'l Labor Relations Bd. v. Canning, 573 U.S. 513 (2014), where a cola distributor challenged a labor regulation, saying that the members of the NLRB who enacted it were improperly appointed. The Court agreed that the appointments were improper, so the regulations were nullified. A judicial decision coming out under these circumstances would also be nullified if one of the judges weren't really a judge. That happened just last year, in Yovino v. Rizo. In that case, ten judges from the Ninth Circuit heard a case, and the vote split 6-4. But the author of the majority opinion died before the decision was published, which is when it become effective. The Supreme Court held that because there were therefore only five votes for that decision, it was not a majority opinion, and therefore not binding on future Ninth Circuit panels.
There is no recourse The Pardon results in the pardoned person having no liability for the act, no matter if it was a crime or not, and no matter whether the pardon pre-dates a prosecution. There is no legal or political way to appeal a pardon. There isn't even a way to take back a pardon! As a result, the prosecutor or the next governor can do nothing.
To become law, a bill must be passed, in identical form, by both chambers of Congress, during the same Congress that is during the two-year period between congressional elections. At the end of a congress (also called a term), any bill that did not become law (passed by both chambers and signed by the President or any veto overridden) is dead. It may be taken up in a later congress, but it starts again from the beginning of the process. See Article I, Section 7, Clauses 2 and 3 of the United States Constitution The comments correctly point out that the constitutional provision cited and linked to above does not specify the rule that a bill must pass both chambers during the same Congress (sometimes called the same term of Congress). I am confident that the rule stated above is correct. I have read news stories about bills that did not pass both chambers &quot;dying&quot; at the end of a Congress, although I have no citations to hand at the moment. I have spent several hours over the last two days searching the House and Senate websites, reading the House rules, the Senate rules, and Jefferson's Manual. Jefferson's Manual began as notes on parliamentary procedure, made for his own use by Thomas Jefferson during his tenure as Vice-President (1797-1801), based on the then-current procedure of the English Parliament. It is the original basis for the Senate rules. I understand that it is still considered an authority on the procedures of Parliament as they existed in the period 1750-1801. Jefferson's Manual of Parliamentary Practice section li (a session) (sec 588, page 316), reads: Parliament have three modes of separation, to wit: by adjournment, by prorogation or dissolution by the King, or by the efflux of the term for which they were elected. Prorogation or dissolution constitutes there what is called a session; provided some act was passed. In this case all matters depending before them are discontinued, and at their next meeting are to be taken up de novo, if taken up at all. 1 Blackst., 186. ... [Sec 590, page 317] Congress separate in two ways only, to wit, by adjournment, or dissolution by the efflux of their time. What, then, constitutes a session with them? A dissolution certainly closes one session, and the meeting of the new Congress begins another. The Constitution authorizes the President, &quot;on extraordinary occasions to convene both Houses, or either of them.&quot; I. 3. If convened by the President's proclamation, this must begin a new session, and of course determine the preceding one to have been a session. So if it meets under the clause of the Constitution which says, &quot;the Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.&quot; I. 4. This must begin a new session; for even if the last adjournment was to this day the act of adjournment is merged in the higher authority of the Constitution, and the meeting will be under that, and not under their adjournment. So far we have fixed landmarks for determining sessions. ... [Sec 592, page 318] When it was said above that all matters depending before Parliament were discontinued by the determination of the session, it was not meant for judiciary cases depending before the House of Lords, such as impeachments, appeals, and writs of error. These stand continued, of course, to the next session. Raym., 120, 381; Ruffh. Fac., L. D., Parliament. The practice of the English Parliament as set down by Mr. Jefferson seems to be the basis of the current US practice, but I can find no law, nor any provision of the current house or senate rules, explicitly adopting or codifying it, or setting it as a rule for the US. The official page How Our Laws Are Made has an extensive discussion of the progress of a bill from proposal to law, but nowhere mentions what happens to a bill not agreed to by both chambers.
The pardons would stand and continue to be valid. There is a minority view that the &quot;except in cases of impeachment&quot; language in the pardon clause of the U.S. Constitution deprives a President of the pardon power after impeachment until there is a U.S. Senate non-conviction. But the majority view is that this clause merely states that the loss of political office and prohibition on seeking future political office resulting from a U.S. Senate conviction in an impeachment trial cannot be removed via the pardon power. In the majority view, a President has all of the powers and authority of the office, including the pardon power, until the moment of a U.S. Senate conviction following a impeachment by the U.S. House (or the end of his term of office due to resignation or expiration of the President's term of office). Neither view, of course, has ever been resolved authoritatively in the courts because it has never come up before historically. Also, a group pardon would not absolve the President himself of criminal liability. The majority view (again never tested because no President has ever attempted to do so) is that a President may not pardon himself at all. But all other persons who benefit from the pardon would be relieved of criminal liability as a result.
It's not clear what the big deal is. Congress has already passed vast numbers of laws for POTUS to enforce, and has left the details of implementation up to the executive branch. The main limitation is that you need a Congress to fund any new federal government projects. The Constitution anticipates this problem, and there are clauses regarding filling vacancies (clearly applicable to the dead). Assuming that zombies are rioting in the streets, POTUS can invoke the National Emergencies Act, issuing an executive order to call out the National Guard.
The bill was never passed. According to the list of all actions on Congress.gov, the bill was referred to the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce in April 2019. Evidently, that subcommittee never did anything further with it. The bill was never voted on by either the House or the Senate.
It would indeed be valid and legally enforceable. The Constitution places no limits on what languages bills must be written in. The Constitution specifically allows each house of Congress to make its own rules for how it passes bills, so, even if a house of Congress had a rule requiring its bills to be in English (which they don't, as far as I know,) they could simply change the rules and then pass the bill. From a practical standpoint, though, enforceability would also require courts to be able to discern Congress' intent from the bill. As such, unless we're expanding the assumption to &quot;the vast majority of the U.S., including the courts in all parts of the country, are now fluent in Spanish,&quot; then it's exceedingly unlikely that Congress actually would pass a substantive bill in a language other than English. Even without assuming all of Congress were fluent, it's possible that they could pass a resolution in Spanish as a gesture, but they would almost certainly not pass a substantive bill in Spanish (or any other language than English) due to the enforceability problems it would cause with courts (and, if relevant, regulatory agencies, etc.) Aside from the courts needing to be able to understand the normal meanings of the words in Spanish, there would also be the problem of the complete lack of any legal history of Spanish words in U.S. law (or even in common law in general.) Much of legal interpretation is steeped in history of what particular words have meant (and/or been ruled by courts to mean) in past laws. Throwing all of that legal history out the window by switching to another language would be quite problematic when trying to craft a bill on any substantive subject matter. Suffice it to say that crafting the definitions section for such a bill would be quite a task. So, yes, it would technically be legal and it would indeed be the law, but doing it with any substantive subject matter (without assuming that most of the population now understands Spanish) would be so problematic for enforceability in practice that they wouldn't actually consider doing it.