Margaret Love

Margaret Love practices law in Washington, D.C., specializing in executive clemency and restoration of rights, sentencing and corrections policy, and government ethics.  An authority on the presidential pardon power, she has also published extensively on federal sentencing issues, and on the collateral consequences of arrest and conviction.  She is the founding director of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center (CCRC), where she maintains a national research database of restoration of rights mechanisms in all 50 states.  She is co-author of Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions:  Law, Policy and Practice (NACDL/West 3d ed. 2018), the leading treatise on this subject, serves on the enactment committee of the Uniform Collateral Consequences of Conviction Act, and as an Adviser to the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code: Sentencing project.  From 1996-1998 she chaired the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility, and later served on several ABA committees engaged in drafting standards for criminal justice. 

Before establishing her private practice in 1998, Ms. Love served in the U.S. Justice Department for twenty years, from 1978 to 1997, including as Associate Deputy Attorney General (1988-1990) and U.S. Pardon Attorney (1990-1997). She received her law degree from Yale, has an M.A. in Medieval History from the U. of Pennsylvania, and studied music and drama as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence College.   She currently sings with the Alexandria Choral Society and in the parish choir at St. John’s Lafayette Square.  She is a long-time resident of Capitol Hill, where she raised a daughter who now represents capital defendants in federal court.