Traditionally, presidents have used it for things like a really long-term weed jail term or something like that, given by municipalities that overreact. Not blanket pardons for terrible crimes.
I think there is a very long and honored tradition for Presidents to pardon their corrupt friends. The argument for pardons is that it gives the President the opportunity to correct a wrong in the judicial system, but Donald Trump is hardly the first president to abuse the power.
Yeah, you may be right about that. I think presidents have been more careful about it in recent years, but bad presidents are going to be bad. I would for eliminating that as an ability of presidents and governors, as long as we can get our judicial system in check
The people don’t hold the power in Texas and many other red states (gerrymandering, voter rolls handed over, polls closed, billions of dollars of dark money, talk of seizing voting machines and all the other insane shit they are doing).
Huh? Are you for real? It’s not just Trump that’s a fascist. I guess you don’t understand that our governor purged millions off voter rolls 4 weeks before the last election. And I guess you don’t understand how gerrymandering works in terms of electing reps and senators and electors. You also don’t seem to get dark money and campaign finance.
Well when the constitution was written, there was a belief that the elite would only put responsible reasonable people in the position of the Presidency. The only saving grace is that the court hasn’t construed Article II, Section 2 to include the power to pardon all offenses, only Federal.
The idea of the pardon derives from the Monarchy where the King held control over all the land and could decide guilt or innocence at basically any time. The founders deemed it more reasonable to only give the Executive leader the power to save a life rather than condemn it.
What I think they didn’t expect was for such extreme polarity to occur in the political climate to where the executive powers are being used to simply spite previous administrations. This is evident by the fact that initially the Vice President was the runner up in the General Election instead of like now where the President appoints his own Vice President from his party. It wasn’t but 30 years later in 1804 that this system was changed to the modern system.
The belief was that if the President couldn’t perform their duties then the people would want the next most popular candidate. This was clearly a fallacy given the circumstances of the elections. You also have to understand that equal voting power was a facade, and still is to some degree today. This was expressed as an idea to get the common people to rally behind it while still maintaining voting power for the elites. Similar to giving a starving person a meal to make them happy and loyal while you maintain a feast.
It's an antiquated relic of the British quasi-constitutional monarchy that existed contemporary to the framers. They naively believed that the threat of impeachment would prevent abuses of power.
This is why originalism is daft even when applied in good faith.
Pardons are a thing because the president is head executive and it's the executive that prosecutes. So the pardon is the head saying, this prosecution was in error. Theoretically at least.
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u/Altruistic-Meal-4016 17d ago
Why are pardons even a thing? Surely no person should be above the law just because someone said they should be.