Earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued a pardon for Adriana Camberos, a businesswoman who had been convicted of fraud in 2024.

Amid the thousands of pardons the president has granted during his current term, which have encompassed Jan. 6 rioters, cryptocurrency kingpins, a former Puerto Rico governor, and even a former Honduran president, this one stood out: Trump had already commuted the sentence imposed on Camberos for a similar offense four years earlier, but she returned to her fraudulent ways and found herself in prison a second time. And for a second time, according to the New York Times, Camberos enlisted the help of two attorneys who had previously served in the Trump administration, including one who had represented Rudy Giuliani.

Trump has taken pardon abuse to staggering new heights, issuing various forms of clemency at least an order of magnitude more frequently than any of his predecessors. But former President Joe Biden also granted several deeply problematic pardons, and presidents over the course of recent history have been no strangers to the practice. It used to be the case that presidents would sheepishly announce the bulk of their clemency decisions during their final months in office as lame ducks, but the second Trump administration has proudly and consistently been handing them out throughout his first year in office.

So what on Earth is going on? How and why have clemency grants spiraled so far out of control? And, given the pardon clause’s seemingly unassailable place in the Constitution, can the genie possibly be put back into the bottle?

I would humbly submit that we can and must take action to rein in a presidential privilege that has fundamentally transcended its original bounds. In a superb new book, University of Virginia law professor Saikrishna Prakash explores the evolution of the pardon power and offers suggestions on how to rationalize it. “As presidents wield the pardon pen,” Prakash writes, “they advance their ideological and personal agendas, bolster their electoral bases, inflict psychic wounds on opponents, and wreak havoc upon the rule of law.”

Yet we needn’t proceed down this path. As Prakash puts it, “Considerable good also could arise from a different pardon regime.” He urges us to “reform the pardon power in a way that generates far less heat and far more acclaim.”

It will surely be an uphill battle, but, to borrow a phrase from elsewhere in the Constitution, it’s a necessary and proper one — that is, if we want to restore balance to our liberal order.

But we must start by examining how we got here in the first place.

The practice of a sovereign issuing clemency to his subjects dates back to the Bible, Ancient Mesopotamia, and probably earlier, but the peculiarly American version of the pardon power derives directly from our British ancestors. As Prakash puts it, the pardon clause is “a regal remnant that, in some respects, renders the president more powerful than the British monarch of the eighteenth century.”

At common law, the British tradition of clemency anchored itself in mercy, reconciliation, and law enforcement: By providing leniency to some, the king ensures compliance by most. Specifically, Prakash finds, pardons helped “secure soldiers, exile miscreants, and fill the Crown’s coffers,” at least in cases where clemency recipients paid a fee for the privilege. They also greased the skids for parliamentary appropriations and for the king’s favored courtiers, who, “in exchange for their access and influence … charged hefty fees to would-be pardon-seekers.”

The colonies swiftly adopted their forebears’ customs. New York, Maryland, North Carolina, and Delaware granted their governors the exclusive power to pardon, while New Hampshire, Virginia, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New Jersey required the participation of the legislature. The principal justifications for the practice during the Revolutionary Era included rehabilitating loyalists and integrating them into the new country. Gen. George Washington set the tone, sometimes approving a death sentence, allowing a noose to be placed around the condemned’s neck, and only then granting a reprieve.

But as the constitutional conventions gathered steam, a heated debate erupted over the proposed language for a federal pardon authority, namely, that the president “shall have the power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The Anti-Federalists objected vigorously, arguing that the clause awarded the president “absolute power” and “unrestrained power,” insisting that this “unlimited” prerogative be confined by “proper restrictions.” George Mason refused to sign the Constitution in part because of the pardon power, while a North Carolinian........

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