Give me 1 (one) good reason why Presidential pardons are allowed

Give me 1 (one) good reason why Presidential pardons are allowed

The Judiciary has no better judgment than the Executive.

You can thank the british for that one.

The presidential pardon is a limited version of the kings prerogative.

Federalist Paper n.74:

>Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed. The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.

Criminal systems have to be strict and unbending to be fair but that means they don't do well at reevaluating themselves, especially when they screw up. There has to be a way that to easily address obvious injustice.

>As the sense of responsibility is always strongest, in proportion as it is undivided, it may be inferred that a single man would be most ready to attend to the force of those motives which might plead for a mitigation of the rigor of the law, and least apt to yield to considerations which were calculated to shelter a fit object of its vengeance. The reflection that the fate of a fellow-creature depended on his sole fiat, would naturally inspire scrupulousness and caution; the dread of being accused of weakness or connivance, would beget equal circumspection, though of a different kind. On the other hand, as men generally derive confidence from their numbers, they might often encourage each other in an act of obduracy, and might be less sensible to the apprehension of suspicion or censure for an injudicious or affected clemency. On these accounts, one man appears to be a more eligible dispenser of the mercy of government, than a body of men.

A normal appeals system will work for many cases, but there are some accusations of crime that would inflame everyones passions or prevent people from seeing any mercy, especially when mistakes had been made (someone falsely convicted of treason, as HamJayMad like to point out).

A council or bar of people deciding would make it easier for no one to take the blame, sort of like a firing squad. One man having the responsibility would solve this

Also, one could make the case that as the Judiciary has become more powerful over the executive and has become more partisan, the Executive may use pardons more broadly to check against any attempts at courts inventing criminal policy (e.g. max punishment in all cases) or deciding cases on partisan lines.

The president is head of the executive branch.

>Amerispergs desperately trying to justify corruption being legislated into their "government"

Gonna be a good thread.

Which other system is better?

the criminal law has always been designed and redesigned with executive clemency as an integral part of the plan. criminal laws are not meant to be enforced 100%, and none of them should be.

In Nixon's case
1. He hadn't done anything necessarily wrong
2. Between the war and the economy Ford understood that pardoning Nixon instead of letting it get dragged out was best for the nation, probably why Trump is ignoring Hillary's past