Presidential Pardons

“The President ... shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons 
for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.”

-- U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2

The presidential pardon has been employed to address a vast spectrum of different circumstances. Presidents have chosen not only to pardon political allies, but to restore religious freedoms, correct wrongful convictions, provide solace to widows, give relief to the poor, grant clemency to rebels, and promote a sense of healing. The framers of the Constitution viewed the pardon not as a mechanism of legal redress, but as an instrument of mercy, the final prerogative of which should lie not within the judicial branch, but with the executive power.

In his defense of the new constitution in The Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton defended the presidential pardon in an interesting way: He examined the psychology of responsibility and concluded that ultimate mercy is best invested in one man rather than many.

Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed...As the sense of responsibility is always strongest in proportion as it is undivided, it may be inferred that a single man would be most ready to attend to the force of those motives, which might plead for a mitigation of the rigor of the law, and least apt to yield to considerations, which were calculated to shelter a fit object of its vengeance...On the other hand, as men generally derive confidence from their numbers, they might often encourage each other in an act of obduracy and might be less sensible to the apprehension of suspicion or censure for an injudicious or affected clemency. On these accounts, one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of the government than a body of men. (Federalist #74)

Today, presidents seldom exercise their authority to grant pardons without an express recommendation from the attorney general’s office. The pardon request review process is normally handled by a separate and dedicated staff within the Department of Justice. The review process is usually slow and deliberate, thereby protecting the president from accusations of political motivation in his decisions. Most recent pardon candidates have undergone this review process. Occasionally, however, presidents will bypass the review and exercise their authority to grant pardons as they see fit. Such cases, invariably, among the most politicized of pardons, include Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, George H. W. Bush’s pardon of Caspar Weinberger, and the set of 30 unreviewed pardons that Bill Clinton granted on his last day of office.