• Education,  Protecting Democracy

    Presidential Pardons: Possibilities, Precedents, and Problems

    With presidential pardons in recent news, MWEG offers a Q&A to sort through possibilities, precedents, and potential problems with this presidential power. Q: What are the purposes and types of presidential pardons?A: This power allows a president to forgive criminal offenses through pardons, amnesty, commutation, and reprieve. Informed by the British monarchy, the executive power to pardon was intended to add elements of mercy and clemency to the Constitution. The assumption held that men of virtue would exercise this power for the good of the people and not for their own purposes.  Pardons grant the person complete legal forgiveness of a crime, as if it had never happened. Amnesty does…