What Trump’s latest pardons remind us about power, justice and ultimate authority
Last week, President Trump issued pardons for 70-plus individuals and allies in connection with the 2020 presidential election. The wave of presidential pardons has reopened an old American tension: how much power should any one person hold in a nation built on checks and balances?
The pardons are largely symbolic at this point, as none of the names are accused of federal crimes— and presidential pardons do not extend to state cases— but they would “preclude any future administration from potentially pursuing a criminal case against them,” according to POLITICO. The article also notes:
The language of the pardon is broad, applying to “all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting activities, participation in or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of presidential electors … as well for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 presidential election.”
Though Trump has long insisted he has the power to pardon himself for federal crimes — an untested proposition — it appears he is not yet prepared to test that theory. Though the pardon document indicates it could apply to others who fit the same criteria, it explicitly excludes Trump.
The power of the pardon has always been an uncomfortable one for Americans. When the Founders created a new kind of government in our representative democracy, they instituted checks and balances across three branches of government and through enumerated state and federal powers— all set against the limits of government power through the Bill of Rights.
Still, the Constitution gives the President wide latitude in using his pardon power. As part of these checks and balances in American democracy, the President may, in essence, usurp the role of judge in a trial. Presidents have pardoned spies, revolutionaries, and leaders of organized crime. Most famously, President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for his part in Watergate.
But the pardon is not a complete power. Just as every branch of government is checked and balanced by the other two; a President is limited here as well.
Can the President self-pardon? Should he? And, what should we make of the blanket “pre-emptive” pardons for political allies, as Trump has issued this week? We are in new territory.
There are all kinds of legal and ethical questions around the reach of the Presidential pardon. Political controversies often expose deeper questions—not just about law, but about authority itself. For Christians, pardons all remind us of a theological reality: God is ultimately sovereign, Man (even a King) is not.
Our Founding Fathers fought for the reversal in order of two Latin words: Rex Lex. The system where the King is the law is known as Rex Lex. Citizens of a country could appeal to the King for justice or restitution, but when those appeals failed they were left with no recourse. The King was literally the final authority.
What we have in our American system is a reversal of those Latin words. Here, instead of Rex Lex, we have Lex Rex: law is king— and everyone is equal under it, even the leaders.
Where did the concept of equal justice under the law originate? One source is Christian moral truth which advances a revolutionary idea: all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator (not their government) with certain unalienable rights.
This truth means God is Sovereign— and the ultimate authority. Political leaders are men just like the rest of us, subject to God’s power. The U.S. Constitution, then, seeks to uphold our God-given rights by a just rule of law.
Indeed, the self-governed ideal of America only works if her people are themselves governing the self within a mutually agreed upon rule of law.
The problem is, of course, no man-made political system will be perfectly ordered to protect human dignity. Our laws are still created and adjudicated by fallen men and subject to sin.
But not insignificantly, Christianity collapses any social, political, racial or economic caste systems. Christian morality contends that all people are equal as God’s image bearers. We are equal in the impartial eyes of God. And all men are equal at the foot of the cross where we come to terms with the reality that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We also stand with equal opportunity for God’s gracious redemption in Jesus Christ.
While pardons may be the privilege of a president, ultimate justice belongs to God. So, even as we strive to live out the realities of Lex Rex here and now— we continue to look hope-filled to a future when all will be made right but the one true King whose perfect and righteous reign will never end.
