A/HRC/8/3 page 21 eliminated the law governing clemency,76 and has culminated in a determined congressional push in 2008 to adopt a law on presidential clemency, which lacks procedural safeguards and introduces a tacit rejection rule if the President fails to act on a petition within 30 days. 62. Before examining the relevant international jurisprudence in this area, it is important to acknowledge the functions that a right to clemency, as it is sometimes called, plays within the legal system. Even though the right has been characterized as lying at “the borderland of legality”77 because of the power it vests in the political authorities, it is nonetheless a part of the legal system in the broadest sense. Its serves: (a) As a final safety valve when new evidence indicating that a conviction was erroneous emerges but in a form that is inadequate to reopen the case through normal procedures; (b) To enable account to be taken of post-conviction developments of which an appeals court might not be able to take cognizance but which nevertheless warrant being considered in the context of an otherwise irreversible remedy; (c) To provide an opportunity for the political process, which is rightly excluded from otherwise interfering in the course of criminal justice, to show mercy to someone whose life would otherwise be forfeited. 63. The key question then is: what procedural safeguards are required to be followed in order to ensure that the right to seek pardon or commutation is respected in practice? The Human Rights Committee had an opportunity to respond to this question when it considered a claim that the procedural guarantees of article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights must be followed. In rejecting that claim, it observed that “States parties retain discretion for spelling out the modalities” as indicated by the fact that article 6 (4) itself prescribed no particular procedure.78 The Committee did not, however, endorse the view that the modalities followed were irrelevant, as underscored by the fact that it then held that the relevant procedures in place in the State concerned were not “such as to effectively negate the right enshrined” in article 6 (4). In other words, it left open the possibility that procedures could be deficient. 76 In its observations on the situation in Guatemala the Human Rights Committee expressed its concern over the elimination of the right to pardon. Final Observations of the Human Rights Committee: Guatemala, 27 August 2001, CCPR/CO/72/GTM, para. 18. The issue was subsequently taken up by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the Case of Fermín Ramírez v. Guatemala, Judgment of 20 June 2005 (Merits, Reparations and Costs), at http://www.corteidh.or.cr/docs/casos/articulos/seriec_126_ing.doc. The Court held that the failure of domestic legislation to identify any “State body [that] has the power to know of and decide upon the measures of grace” violated Guatemala’s obligations under the Convention. Ibid., para. 110. 77 Sarat and Hussein, “On Lawful Lawlessness: George Ryan, Executive Clemency, and the Rhetoric of Sparing Life”, 56 Stanford Law Review (2004) 1307, at 1312. 78 Kennedy v. Trinidad and Tobago, Communication No. 845/1998 (2002), para. 7.4.