The power to pardon is one of the least limited powers granted to the president in the Constitution. It includes the power to commute sentences to a lesser penalty. The only limits mentioned in the Constitution are that pardons are limited to offenses against the United States (i.e., not civil or state cases) and that they cannot affect an impeachment process. A reprieve is the commutation or lessening of a sentence already imposed; it does not affect the legal guilt of a person. A pardon, however, completely wipes out the legal effects of a conviction. A pardon can be issued from the time an offense is committed, and can even be issued after the full sentence has been served. It cannot, however, be granted before an offense has been committed, which would give the president the power to waive the laws.

The presidential power to pardon was derived from the prerogative of the English king, which dated from before the Norman Conquest. The royal power was absolute, and the king often granted a pardon in exchange for money or military service. Parliament tried unsuccessfully to limit the king’s pardon power, and it finally succeeded to some degree in 1701 when it passed the Act of Settlement, which exempted impeachment from the royal pardon power.

During the period of the Articles of Confederation, the state constitutions conferred pardon powers of varying scopes on their governors, but neither the New Jersey Plan nor the Virginia Plan presented at the Constitutional Convention included a pardon power for the chief executive. On May 29, 1787, Charles Pinckney introduced a proposal to give the chief executive the same pardon power as enjoyed by English monarchs, that is, complete power with the exception of impeachment. Some delegates argued that treason should be excluded from the pardon power. George Mason argued that the president’s pardon power “may be sometimes exercised to screen from punishment those whom he had secretly instigated to commit the crime, and thereby prevent a discovery of his own guilt.” James Wilson answered that pardons for treason should be available and successfully argued that the power would be best used by the president. Impeachment was available if the president himself were involved in the treason. A proposal for Senate approval of presidential pardons was also defeated.

The development of the use of the pardon power reflects its several purposes. One purpose is to temper justice with mercy in appropriate cases; another is to do justice if new or mitigating evidence comes to bear on a person who may have been wrongfully convicted. Alexander Hamilton reflects this in The Federalist No. 74, in which he argues that “[h]umanity and good policy” require that “the benign prerogative of pardoning” be available to mitigate the harsh justice of the criminal code. The pardon power would provide for “exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt.”

Chief Justice John Marshall in United States v. Wilson (1833) also commented on the benign aspects of the pardon power: “A pardon is an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual, on whom it is bestowed, from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed. It is the private, though official act of the executive magistrate . . .” Another purpose of the pardon power focuses not on obtaining justice for the person pardoned, but rather on the public policy purposes of the government. For instance, James Wilson argued during the convention that “pardon before conviction might be necessary, in order to obtain the testimony of accomplices.” The public policy purposes of the pardon were echoed by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in Biddle v. Perovich (1927): “A pardon in our days is not a private act of grace from an individual happening to possess power. It is a part of the constitutional scheme.”

Pardons have also been used for the broader public policy purpose of ensuring peace and tranquility in the case of uprisings and to bring peace after internal conflicts. Its use might be needed in such cases. As Alexander Hamilton argued in The Federalist No. 74, “in seasons of insurrection or rebellion there are often critical moments when a well-timed offer of pardon to the insurgents or rebels may restore the tranquility of the commonwealth; and which, if suffered to pass unimproved, it may never be possible afterwards to recall.”

Presidents have sought to use the pardon power to overcome or mitigate the effects of major crises that afflicted the polity. President George Washington granted an amnesty to those who participated in the Whiskey Rebellion; Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson issued amnesties to those involved with the Confederates during the Civil War; and Presidents Gerald R. Ford and James Earl Carter granted amnesties to Vietnam-era draft evaders.

The scope of the pardon power remains broad, if not plenary. As Justice Stephen Field wrote in Ex parte Garland (1867),

If granted before conviction, it prevents any of the penalties and disabilities consequent upon conviction from attaching [thereto]; if granted after conviction, it removes the penalties and disabilities, and restores him to all his civil rights; it makes him, as it were, a new man, and gives him a new credit and capacity. . . . A pardon reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offence and the guilt of the offender . . . so that in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offence.

Because its purposes are primarily public, a pardon is valid whether accepted or not, unless the president places conditions on the pardon or commutation. But a recipient of a pardon or commutation necessarily accepts the conditions if he accepts the pardon or commutation itself. Schick v. Reed (1974).

A pardon is an official executive act. According to United States v. Klein (1871), Congress cannot limit the president’s grant of an amnesty or pardon, but it can grant other or further amnesties itself. Though pardons have been litigated, the Court has consistently refused to limit the president’s discretion, so long as the president has attached “conditions which do not in themselves offend the Constitution.” Schick v. Reed.

The possibility of a president’s pardoning himself for a crime is not precluded by the explicit language of the Constitution, and during the summer of 1974, some of President Richard M. Nixon’s lawyers argued that it was constitutionally permissible. But a broader reading of the Constitution and the general principles of the traditions of United States law might lead to the conclusion that a self-pardon is constitutionally impermissible. It would seem to violate the principles that a man should not be a judge in his own case; that the rule of law is supreme and the United States is a nation of laws, not men; and that the president is not above the law.

The pardon power has been and will remain a powerful constitutional tool of the president. It can be an occasion for corruption. Yet, not only is the pardon power free of the normal checks and balances of the constitutional order, but even the political checks on the president in awarding pardons are limited. President Ford did pay a political price in pardoning Richard Nixon, but Presidents William J. Clinton and George W. Bush issued their most controversial pardons as they were leaving office, when they were immune from political accountability.

Only the wisdom and moral sense of the president can ensure its appropriate use.