Here’s the theory: a justice system can never be perfect, especially when implemented on a large scale. There will always be legal outcomes that are fundamentally unjust. Efforts should be made to minimize such outcomes , but they will never be eliminated.

Presidential pardons are essentially a way to override the entire justice system in specific cases. With the understanding that even if all actors had good intent and we’re acting rationally the system would still result in unjust convictions, the power to recognize such injustice and summarily fix it is granted to the highest office in the land essentially with no oversight.

In a healthy democratic environment, it’s still an imperfect idea, but it sort of works. When the president wouldn’t dare use it to pardon his cronies or pardon obviously guilty people who did horrible things without remorse, then it mostly works. When the backlash for misusing the pardon power is being democratically crushed, then and only then it makes some sense.

I’m not saying it’s a perfect idea. Whether the presidential pardon power should exist is debatable at the best of times, and I could come up with counter arguments to everything I said above.

The real problem is this isn’t a healthy democratic environment. There’s a cult of personality around one man. He used pardon power to pardon his cronies, and a slew of utter dirtbags, and nobody who voted for him cares . He lost zero votes for that. The problem with pardons is just one of the avenues of rot caused by that phenomenon.