This TED Talk features law professor Martha Minow, recorded live at TED Women 2019.

Would you ever forgive a person who kills a member of your family?

In September of 2019, Dallas police officer, Amber Geiger, was sentenced for murder. And then the brother of the victim

forgave her. Brent Jean was 18 years old, and I joined the rest of the country watching on television

in awe at that act of grace.

But I also worried.

I worried that people who are African-American like Brand Jean are expected to forgive more

often than other people.

And I worried that a white police officer, like Amber Geiger,

receives a lesser sentence than other people who commit wrongful killings.

But because I'm a law professor, I also worried about the law itself.

The law leaned so severely towards punishment these days that

it's part of the problem. And that's what I want to talk about here. The powerful example of one

individual's forgiveness makes me worry that lawyers and officials too often overlook the tools

that law itself creates to allow forgiveness when the principle should be the cornerstone of a thriving

society. I worry that lawyers and officials do not adequately use the tools of forgiveness,

by which I mean letting go of justified grievance. And those tools are many. They include

pardons, commutations, expungement, bankruptcy for debt, and the discretion that's held by police

and prosecutors and judges.

But I also worry, I worry a lot, I worry that these tools, when used, replicate the disparities,

the inequities along the lines of race and class and other markers of advantage and disadvantage.

Biases or privileged access are at work when United States presidents pardon people charged with crimes.

...