The power to grant pardons and reprieves has long been a controversial one. It lodges in chief executives’ vast unchecked discretion. Courts have said that governors can grant pardons “for good reasons or bad, or for any reason at all.”

History has shown that the pardon power can be used well and to help make our society better, fairer, and more forgiving. But it has also been used arbitrarily or to reward friends, repay political favors, and accommodate the well connected.

Instances of corruption or favoritism in the use of clemency tend to make headlines and overshadow examples of its proper and productive use. That is one reason why what Maryland Gov. Wes Moore did on Monday, when he offered a pardon in his state to more than 100,000 people with more than 175,000 marijuana convictions, is so significant. This mass pardon is a sterling example of how the clemency power can and should be used.

Before looking more closely at what happened in Maryland, let’s recall a bit about our country’s history of clemency.

In the 1833 case United States v. Wilson, the Supreme Court took up clemency for the first time. Chief Justice John Marshall described that power in lyrical terms as “an act of grace, proceeding from the power entrusted with the execution of the laws.”

In 1866 the court returned to the subject and acknowledged that clemency power is “unlimited.” It extends, the court noted, “to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time........

© Slate