Margaret Love
| Margaret Colgate Love | |
| Nationality | American |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Attorney, clemency scholar |
| Known for | Serving as U.S. Pardon Attorney, 1990–1997 |
| Education | University of Pennsylvania (M.A.); Yale Law School |
| Website | pardonlaw.com |
Margaret Colgate Love is an American lawyer who served as United States Pardon Attorney from 1990 to 1997 and is recognized as one of the nation's leading authorities on executive clemency and the restoration of rights for people with criminal convictions.[1][2] In that Justice Department post she held overall responsibility for the operation and management of the federal clemency program.[3]
Since leaving government, Love has represented applicants for presidential pardons and commutations from her Washington, D.C. practice, co-founded and directs the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, and co-authored the treatise Collateral Consequences of a Criminal Conviction: Law, Policy and Practice.[2][4][3]
Education
Love trained as a historian before she trained as a lawyer.[1] She earned a master's degree in medieval history from the University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from Yale Law School.[3]
Career
U.S. Department of Justice
Love joined the Department of Justice as senior counsel in the Office of Legal Counsel, where she served from 1979 to 1988.[3] She then served as deputy associate attorney general and associate deputy attorney general from 1988 to 1990, before being appointed U.S. Pardon Attorney, a position she held from 1990 to 1997 with overall responsibility for the operation and management of the Justice Department's clemency program.[3] She has said she warned her superiors about problems she saw developing in the pardon system before leaving the department not long afterward.[1]
Clemency practice and scholarship
Love has spent more than twenty-five years evaluating and preparing applications for presidential pardon and other forms of executive clemency, and represents clients seeking pardons, commutations of sentence, and relief from the collateral consequences of conviction at both the federal and state level.[2][3] She has written and lectured widely on pardon policy and practice and on collateral consequences, and co-authored Collateral Consequences of a Criminal Conviction: Law, Policy and Practice (NACDL/West, 2013).[2][3] She wrote her first book on collateral consequences under a Soros Senior Fellowship awarded in 2004.[3]
Bar association and standards work
Love was reporter for the American Bar Association's Justice Kennedy Commission from 2003 to 2005 and directed the ABA's Commission on Effective Criminal Sanctions from 2005 to 2009.[3] She chaired the drafting committees for the ABA Criminal Justice Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners and for the Standards on Collateral Sanctions and Discretionary Disqualification of Convicted Persons, and is a former chair of the ABA Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility.[3] She served on the ABA Commission on the Evaluation of the Rules of Professional Conduct ("Ethics 2000") and on the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers' Task Force on Restoration of Rights and Status.[3] She has also advised the American Law Institute's Model Penal Code sentencing project and helped draft the Uniform Collateral Consequences of Conviction Act.[3]
Collateral Consequences Resource Center
Love co-founded the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, a nonprofit established in 2014, and serves as its executive director.[4] The center's Restoration of Rights Project, which Love built and regularly updates, profiles record-relief laws in every U.S. jurisdiction and has published annual surveys of new rights-restoration laws since 2016.[4] A model law on non-conviction records that the center helped develop in 2019 has contributed to the adoption of automatic sealing of non-conviction records in more than a dozen states.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Margaret Love, Former U.S. Pardon Attorney". Prisonist.org. Retrieved 2026-09-30.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Margaret Love". The Federalist Society. Retrieved 2026-09-30.
- ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 "Biography". Law Office of Margaret Colgate Love. Retrieved 2026-09-30.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "About — Collateral Consequences Resource Center". Collateral Consequences Resource Center. Retrieved 2026-09-30.