On Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that he had granted a “full and unconditional” pardon to his son, Hunter Biden. This announcement wiped away one conviction for Hunter Biden and extricated him from other legal troubles. It also contradicted past statements by the president that he would not issue such a pardon. 

I should state up front that the president’s pardon of his son resides perfectly within his presidential authority. The Constitution gives the president alone this power. He does not need to receive approval from anyone else to give it. The pardon can be for past convictions or current investigations. The Constitution gives no exceptions to the president’s pardoning power save one: A president cannot pardon an impeachment conviction. 

While not violating the Constitution’s letter, the president’s pardon of Hunter Biden clearly infringes on its spirit. As described in Federalist 74, the framers saw two broad roles for the pardoning power. 

First, a president could use the pardoning power to mitigate instances where regular justice was too harsh. Laws are written as general rules that mostly cover the normal circumstances in which crimes might be committed. Laws can miss extenuating factors and scenarios. Consider Jean Valjean in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, who does break the law by stealing but does so as a starving child seeking to feed his also starving sibling. 

The pardoning power permits the law to continue to govern normal situations while giving space for a president to address special circumstances. It thereby allows the prudence of an executive under the law to modify specific instances of injustice when applying the law. Strangely, it is a suspension of the rule of law in one case to uphold the legitimacy of the rule of law in general. 

Second, a president might employ the pardoning power to restore peace in times of violent tumult. Insurrections, riots, and similar disturbances deserve to be put down, and the perpetrators punished according to the law. Yet situations might exist where the violence has been not just terrible but ongoing with little sign of ending. Federalist 74 noted that a well-timed offer of pardon might bring the rebelling or rioting side to the negotiating table or even get them to disband. 

In such a situation, justice in the strictly legal (and even moral) sense might not be served. However, given the choice of letting the guilty go free or more innocent persons dying, a president might wisely take the former path to avoid more of the latter from taking place. 

Taken together, these purposes for pardons seek to take imperfect laws, persons, and situations and mitigate those imperfections. In the case of Hunter Biden, none of these factors is at play. Hunter Biden has received due process, even at times deferential treatment in the legal process. He also leads no movement of resistance in which a pardon could serve the public good. 

The president’s pardon of his son, then, seems like nothing more than a powerful father seeking to use his public office to do a private favor for his son. He is using the presidency for personal favors and has placed fatherly doting over the rule of law. It is an abuse of the pardon power and, thus, an abuse of the office of the presidency of the United States. 

Not only does the president’s pardon violate justice regarding his son. This move invites future abuses by future presidents who can point to this pardon to also wield this power with impunity. At this point in our history, with trust in our institutions in tatters, we need officeholders who will clearly reject abusing their office for personal, including familial, gain. Otherwise, we risk descending further into a politics of benefiting friends while hurting enemies, of might making right, and of the rule of law acting as a cover for the rule of personal whims. 

It is a shameful end to an already weak and unraveled presidency. 

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Adam Carrington is an associate professor at Ashland University.