Since then, Trump has continued to reward political loyalists with pardons or commutations. Among them are former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, online drug dealer Ross Ulbricht, and George Santos, the former representative from Long Island, who had served less than three months of a seven-year prison sentence for fraud, identity theft, and money laundering.

These were not gestures of mercy or humanity. They were acts of raw politics and self-interest -- yet perfectly legal: Under Article II of the Constitution, presidents have virtually unfettered authority to pardon anyone convicted of a federal crime. A pardon granted for political gain is as binding as one meant to rectify injustice.

For many years I agreed with those who said the Founders had been right to invest presidents with such unusual freedom to override judges and juries. No doubt they expected that there would be crooked presidents who might exploit that power. But they also knew that sometimes the criminal justice system blunders badly and wanted an emergency override to prevent miscarriages of justice. In any case, presidential clemency was limited to violations of federal law, and in America's early decades, federal criminal statutes were few and far between.

Moreover, as Alexander Hamilton noted in Federalist No. 74, there might be occasions when "a well-timed offer of pardon" would be the best way to defuse a bitter political conflict and "restore the tranquility of the commonwealth." The very first pardon, in fact, was extended by George Washington to the ringleaders of the Whiskey Rebellion -- an armed revolt that might have torn the young republic apart had he not chosen conciliation over force. Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, in hopes of bringing the "long, national nightmare" of Watergate to a close. In the same spirit of national reconciliation, Jimmy Carter in 1977 pardoned some 200,000 Americans who had refused to fight in Vietnam.

But in recent years, presidential clemency has increasingly been used not to promote healing but to shield allies, punish enemies, and settle scores. As the past year has shown, the pardon power has degenerated from a noble prerogative into a partisan weapon. Presidents now wield it not to temper strict justice but to escape it -- or to reward those who helped them bend it.

Biden's wholesale pardon of his son Hunter for any federal crimes he committed dating back to 2014 was a staggering example of such abuse -- all the more so because he had repeatedly insisted that he would not do it. It shut down ongoing investigations into influence-peddling schemes involving millions of dollars in foreign payments. His commutation of nearly every federal death sentence amounted to a stealth abolition of capital punishment by executive fiat. Both actions subverted laws Congress had duly enacted and Biden had never sought to repeal.

Trump has been just as egregious. His blanket pardon for all Jan. 6 offenders, including those convicted of assaulting police officers, transformed a violent assault on constitutional order into a badge of political loyalty. His commutation of Santos's sentence is only the latest in a litany of favors to cronies, donors, and admirers.

In recent months, Trump pardoned a Virginia sheriff caught selling badges for cash, a tax-dodging nursing home magnate who stole millions of tax dollars withheld from his employees, and a reality TV couple who defrauded Atlanta banks of $30 million. None had been wrongly convicted or demonstrated remorse; all were outspoken Trump supporters. "No MAGA left behind," crowed Ed Martin, who was appointed in May to be the president's pardon attorney.

The Framers vested the pardon power in a single executive, trusting that most presidents would exercise it with a sense of moral gravity. That assumption no longer holds. What was meant as a safeguard against injustice has become one of its chief instruments.

The result is a constitutional contradiction: Presidents obliged to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" deploy clemency as a tool to make a mockery of the laws.

Plainly, the pardon power no longer works. Miscarriages of justice today are much more likely to be rectified by the nation's extensive network of federal courts and appellate review. Americans don't need presidents to dispense mercy from the throne. They need a constitutional amendment to repeal a power that has become a dangerous relic.

It's time to end presidential pardons - The Boston Globe