Definition
An official act of grace by which the executive authority of a government forgives a person for a criminal offense, releasing that person from the legal punishment the offense carries. A pardon does not erase the underlying conviction or the fact that the offense occurred; it removes or extinguishes the penalties and legal disabilities that flow from it.
At the federal level in the United States, the pardon power is vested in the President and extends to offenses against the United States. Each state vests analogous authority — typically in the governor, sometimes with the participation of a pardon board — over state criminal offenses. A pardon may be granted before prosecution, after conviction and before sentence, or after sentencing and even after punishment has begun. Its legal effect depends partly on its timing and partly on any conditions attached to it.
Key distinctions:
(1) ABSOLUTE (UNCONDITIONAL) PARDON: Forgives the offense and removes attendant punishments and disabilities without imposing any requirement on the recipient.
(2) CONDITIONAL PARDON: Takes effect only upon the performance of some condition by the pardoned individual, or is subject to revocation if a stated condition is violated.
---
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Forgiveness for an offense; or, an official order releasing a convicted person from further punishment, preventing future punishment, or (in some jurisdictions) removing the offense from the person's record as if it had never been committed.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of pardoning; forgiveness of an offender or an offense; release from penalty; remission of punishment; absolution. Also used in polite expressions of denial or non-comprehension.
The gap between common and legal meaning is significant in two directions. First, ordinary usage treats a pardon as equivalent to forgiveness that erases the event — the Wiktionary definition even contemplates removal of the offense from the record "as if it had never been committed." The traditional legal rule is narrower: a pardon releases punishment but does not obliterate the conviction or the historical fact of the crime. Second, common usage treats a pardon as purely forward-looking, while the legal instrument can be granted retroactively and carry collateral consequences courts have long disputed.
---
Common Confusion
PARDON vs. COMMUTATION: A commutation reduces a sentence without releasing the offender from conviction or remaining punishment entirely. A full pardon releases the offender from punishment altogether. Commutation leaves the conviction intact and typically carries no broader restoration of rights; a pardon may restore civil rights, though the scope varies.
PARDON vs. AMNESTY: Historical dictionaries and courts draw this line carefully. A pardon is individual — it applies to a named person for a specific offense and is an act of grace addressed to that individual. Amnesty is general — it applies to a class of persons or offenses (typically political or wartime conduct) and in effect wipes the slate clean for all within the class. Amnesty obliterates the offense as a legal matter; pardon forgives the individual while the offense remains on record.
PARDON vs. EXPUNGEMENT: An expungement (or expunction) is a judicial or administrative act that seals or destroys the record of a conviction. A pardon is an executive act that removes punishment. The two may occur together or independently, and many pardons do not include expungement.
---
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
ABSOLUTE PARDON: Unconditional; takes full effect upon delivery or acceptance.
CONDITIONAL PARDON: Requires compliance with stated conditions; breach may revive punishment.
FULL PARDON: Encompasses the entire conviction and all its legal consequences.
PARTIAL PARDON: Remits only a portion of the punishment (e.g., a fine but not imprisonment), or relieves specific disabilities only.
ANTE-CONVICTION PARDON: Granted before trial or conviction; may be pleaded in bar of prosecution.
POST-CONVICTION PARDON: The most common form; granted after conviction and typically after some or all punishment has been served.
---
Why It Matters in Research
Timing governs legal effect. Researchers must identify whether a pardon was granted before prosecution, after conviction, or after sentence was served — each generates different procedural posture and different collateral consequences. Historical cases and treatises treat these as distinct questions, so a source discussing a pardon's effect "in bar of execution" cannot be generalized to a pre-prosecution pardon.
The acceptance question is a recurring trap. The doctrine that a pardon must be accepted by the recipient to be effective — drawn from early Supreme Court treatment — has been contested and qualified. Researchers working with historical sources should not assume this doctrine applies uniformly across jurisdictions or time periods.
Restoration of civil rights is historically inconsistent. Whether a pardon automatically restores the right to vote, hold office, serve on a jury, or possess firearms has varied by jurisdiction, era, and the terms of the specific pardon. Historical dictionary entries largely omit this dimension, which became increasingly important as collateral consequences of conviction multiplied through the twentieth century.
The self-pardon question is entirely absent from the historical dictionary corpus. It is a modern constitutional controversy with no settled answer in the sources on this shelf. Researchers should treat the historical entries as silent on this issue, not as implicitly resolving it.
Federal-state distinction matters at every step. The President's pardon power does not extend to state offenses; a governor's pardon does not reach federal offenses. Historical sources that discuss the pardon power in general terms often fail to specify which sovereign they are addressing.
---
Historical Dictionary Support
The historical dictionaries converge on a core definition with striking uniformity: a pardon is "an act of grace, proceeding from the power intrusted with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed." This formulation appears in substantially identical form in Black's (both editions) and Bouvier's, tracing to early Supreme Court language. The "act of grace" framing is significant — it reflects the prerogative theory of pardons inherited from English crown practice and carries implications about justiciability and executive discretion that courts have returned to repeatedly.
Bouvier adds a normative note absent from Black's: "Every pardon granted to the guilty is in derogation of the law; if the pardon be equitable, the law is bad." This reflects a strand of nineteenth-century skepticism about broad pardon use that informed debates about pardon power scope, though it is not a legal rule.
Rapalje & Lawrence offers the most procedurally specific historical account, distinguishing the timing of a pardon and its appropriate procedural vehicle — plea in bar before judgment, plea in arrest of judgment or bar of execution afterward. This procedural granularity is useful for researchers working with historical criminal records and may not appear in the other shelf sources.
Anderson's entry for PARDON appears to have suffered a typographical or editorial disruption in the digitized source — the entry begins with PAR value definitions before transitioning to pardon. Researchers using Anderson's should treat the pardon entry as potentially incomplete.
What the historical dictionaries largely omit: the distinction between pardon and expungement (a modern development), any treatment of pardon boards or administrative clemency processes, the collateral consequences framework, and anything resembling the self-pardon question.
---
Jurisdictional Note
At the federal level, the pardon power belongs exclusively to the President and is textually grounded in Article II of the Constitution. Most states vest clemency authority in the governor, though many require recommendation or concurrence from a board of pardons or parole. A small number of states have removed clemency from the governor almost entirely in favor of board action. Researchers should not assume any single procedural model applies across state systems.
---
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Pardon Power — Scope, Limitations, and Self-Pardons (Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia)
Clemency, Pardon, and Commutation (Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
---