The practice of recent American presidents, in absolving criminal defendants and suspects from the penal consequences of their offending and remitting sentences, has been viewed by many British and some American observers with a mixture of incredulity and bewilderment. One thinks, for example, of the pardon granted by President Ford to his predecessor in 1974:

Now, therefore, I, Gerald R. Ford, President of the United States . . . do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offences against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

Nixon himself had controversially pardoned Jimmy Hoffa, the former president of the Teamsters Union, who had been convicted of jury tampering, on condition that he stay out of union politics; and Ford was succeeded by Jimmy Carter, who commuted the 20-year sentence on Gordon Liddy, one of the Watergate conspirators, after four years and three months because of a perceived disparity between his sentence and that imposed on others.

LRB 26 March 2009 | PDF Download