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"Not only does the privilege concept often enter in the judicial motivations, but all agree that sometimes it should. For instance, if the President discharges a cabinet officer for singing the wrong tune on foreign policy, the officer clearly lacks a "right" to continue in his position, and therefore he is not entitled to a hearing even if he denies the facts the President sets forth in discharging him. Similarly, if a Governor states facts in denying a pardon to a convict, no informed lawyer would be likely even to argue that due process entitles the convict to cross-examine those from whom the Governor obtained his facts, for a pardon is too clearly an act of grace and in no sense a legal right". (See the article "The Requirement of a Trial-Type Hearing" by Kenneth Culp Davis.) The concept of privilege, gratuity, or grace is useful; we probably would invent it if our legal system were without it. Like an individual, the Government may make generous gifts, perform compassionate acts of grace, and legally recognise as privileges such interests as deserve to be something less than legal rights. A donee ought not to be allowed to compel the Government to make a gift. Nor should a supplicant for an act of grace be permitted to coerce officers to make a favourable determination in the exercise of discretionary power. Even so, the Government is not and should not be as free as an individual in selecting the recipients for largess. Whatever its activity the Government is still the Government and will be subject to restraints, inherent in its position in a democratic society. A democratic Government cannot lay down arbitrary and capricious standards for the choice of persons with whom alone it will deal.