Presidential pardons: love them or hate them (probably the latter), they have existed since George Washington’s presidency. Now, this topic has recently been brought back into the public eye with President Joe Biden pardoning his son Hunter of his federal gun and drug charges. I personally saw it mentioned in a YouTube video headline late at night and had to grab my phone to verify it, loudly exclaiming to my roommate that there was no way it had happened — especially given that Biden swore he wouldn’t do so over the last four years.
Despite my shock (mostly at his reversal), this is far from the first time a president has issued a full and unconditional pardon, nor is it the first time a president has pardoned a family member. Examining history, it is unclear whether this pardon is as controversial as previous presidential pardons.
Before we dive into previous pardons, let us discuss exactly what they are and how they work. It may come as a surprise, but the right for the president to minimize or overrule convictions, both to individuals and broadly to groups, has always been a part of the United States Constitution (ArtII.S2.C1.3.1). This clause was based on the 694 (A.D.) English law that decreed that kings had the right to choose people’s punishment if they “[fought] in the king’s house.” Although the right to pardon is intentionally broad, presidents are only able to forgive “Offenses against the United States” or federal criminal offenses and are not able to pardon “cases of impeachment,” which I am sure legal minds pondered over after President Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon for any and all crimes he may have committed. Other addendums have been clarified, such as the president’s right to forgive or change either part of or entire sentences, as well as the inability to preemptively forgive crimes, and the implied inability to pardon a crime forbidden constitutionally.
Moving on, or rather moving backward into the past, who have presidents pardoned?
It is perhaps noteworthy how few people Biden has pardoned (27), not counting his mass pardons of federal marijuana charges in use in 2022 and 2023. This is different from other mass pardons because of the role of decriminalization. Only John Adams (20), James A. Garfield (0), and William Henry Harrison (0) have issued fewer. That being said, I posit Garfield and Harrison would have pardoned more people had they not both died shortly after taking office.
On the other hand, Jimmy Carter pardoned over 200,000 people by pardoning draft evasion for the Vietnam War, which proved very controversial at the time. Andrew Johnson only individually pardoned 654 people, however, he also generally pardoned thousands of Confederates, albeit with many exceptions.
One set of pardons I found rather iconic was James Madison’s pardoning of Jean and Pierre Lafitte and their Baratarian pirates due to their help in the War of 812. James Monroe also went on to pardon, in some way, many other pirates. Arguably more iconic, however, was George Wilson. Andrew Jackson pardoned Wilson for robbing U.S. mail, who then subsequently declined the pardon. This prompted a very Supreme Court serious case where justices deliberated on whether a pardon could, in fact, be declined. The Court concluded it could be, and he either was or was not hanged as a result; magazines and newspapers were divided in their reporting.
There were, in fact, numerous cases which, upon seeing, I finally saw the benefits of this power of the president, which provided some validity to the practice. Up until now, much of my knowledge about pardons had been about the rather absurd “pardoning of the turkey.” Millard Fillmore pardoned two people, Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayres, in 1848 for transporting slaves to help them gain freedom (although there were likely numerous other people “guilty” of the same who were convicted and not pardoned), as well as Franklin Pierce’s pardoning of a free black man named Noah who took part in the Underground Railroad. This pardon is the only known pardon of a Black person for participation in the Underground Railroad, nine years before the implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment.
I will leave you with this last thought: clemency appears to be more frequent around Christmas, as well as during the last year of term. So, as this next month wraps up, I have to wonder — will we see any further pardons from Biden?
