Originally Posted by
Thor 2
Trump's fragrant abuse of his privilege to grant pardons brings this to mind.
I just wonder why a head of state should be given this privilege. How did this come about and what is the reasoning behind it?
It is in place because the Justice System is not perfect and so there needs to be a mechanism to remedy a miscarriage of Justice once all appeals have been exhausted. The trouble is that it was not foreseen that a criminal President would be enabled by his own party to continue to act in a way that was criminal and so then pardon himself and those around him. They assumed that an act of criminality would lead to Impeachment, and so added in that the Pardon power could not be used in cases of Impeachment. Again however they failed to specify if this was merely a prohibition for Pardoning a person's impeachment, or whether it means that they can't be pardoned for crimes that lead to an Impeachment, nor whether those that aided in such crimes are also ineligible for a pardon.