(Originally published by The Boston Globe on January 22, 2025.)

Monday’s pardons by two presidents violate the spirit of the pardon power and suggest the need for constitutional reform to eliminate presidential amnesties.

After outgoing President Joe Biden pardoned members of his administration, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, as well as some of his relatives, early Monday, President Trump extended a sweeping pardon to participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Both sets of pardons offered broad-brush indemnification for sometimes unspecified activities. In this way, they harkened back to an earlier parliamentary and even colonial tradition of issuing acts of indemnity and oblivion. This earlier tradition furnished the Anglo-American version of amnesty.

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