From Then to Now - A History of Presidential Pardons

The power to pardon is granted to the president by the Constitution, and can be found in Section 2 of article Ii

"The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual aid of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the indispensable Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."

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The pardon power is absolute except in cases of an impeachment. It is worth noting there is no legislative check on the president's power to pardon.

From the very beginning, the pardon power was controversial. several of the country's founders believed it to be a problematic power, due mostly to a history of abuse by European royals. Founders supporting a plenary presidential pardon authority mostly prevailed, the only check on that power being that the president could not forgive those who had previously been impeached. This was indispensable to assert the equilibrium of power inherent in the disunion of power framework.

The 1794 pardon by George Washington of those indicted and convicted of treason in the wake of the Whiskey Rebellion began the tradition of an ongoing consider concerning those worthy of clemency, most recently broached by the decision and failure of George W. Bush to forgive the criminal transgressions of Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. Washington did form that the penultimate crime against the country (treason) was a pardonable one, but whether or not the offenders deserved it was someone else matter entirely - this though Virginia Governor Henry Lee had already issued a normal pardon outside even those who had not yet been expensed with a crime.

Andrew Johnson's pardoning of the "common Southerner" after assuming the presidency in 1865 raised eyebrows, in addition to his refusal to extend blanket amnesty to the upper classes of Southern society, manufacture the aristocrats he blamed for starting the Civil War apply individually for his forgiveness. Fulfilling a campaign promise, Jimmy Carter conveyed a blanket pardon to those who avoided draft aid while the Vietnam War, though being true not to extend clemency to war protesters, those receiving less than honorable discharges, and deserters.

The motivating rationale behind pardon controversies is simple: second chances for serious offenses are all the time debatable. Each man pardoned has previously been thought about by the judicial system worthy of punishment and infamy. The sound discretion mostly employed in executing the presidential pardon power has resulted in relatively few "scandals" relative to the whole of pardons no ifs ands or buts granted over time.

In modern years, the pardons of Richard Nixon by Gerald Ford, Patty Hearst by Bill Clinton (though her sentence was commuted by Jimmy Carter in 1976), Caspar Weinberger by George H.W. Bush and Switzerland-relocated fugitive Marc Rich by Bill Clinton have all come to be controversial examples of the use of the presidential pardon power.

From Then to Now - A History of Presidential Pardons

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