Ben Wallace-Wells

He has not disappointed, right?

He's just been incredibly aggressive with the pardon pen.

So, every system of government has some ability to mitigate punishments imposed on people for violating the law.

And they do this for several reasons.

One, it's often thought that standing laws are just too harsh.

The punishments are too harsh.

So, they thought that they needed to have some means of modifying the sentence.

They had also seen that, you know, in rebellions, a well-timed pardon could nip the rebellion in the bud.

It enables people to step back from what they're doing and stop doing it.

And so it's a combination of this need to pacify rebellions, a sense that criminal punishments are too harsh, that we have a pardon power across not only American jurisdictions, but across the world.

Many people made that exact complaint, Noelle.

They thought that if you look at the state constitutions, they have all kinds of constraints on the pardon power.

Some crimes can't be

pardoned other crimes you can suspend the sentence and the legislature has to decide when you give a power to one person it just makes it easier to exercise and there's you know as you know the constitution doesn't impose any checks on its exercise you don't need the senate's consent you don't need the house's consent the courts can't review the merits of the pardon

And so a lot of people looked at this and said, this is just far too much power in one person.

But the Constitution was an all or nothing question.

And even if you thought this particular part of it was problematic, you voted on the entire thing up or down.

And so if you liked the other things enough, you voted for it.

Well, George Washington used it first.

You know, he was the first kind of, you know, it's not obvious because, you know, you don't have to give out a pardon if you're president.