Reply #10: The founders [View All]

[Vattel]

didn't believe that any of the President's powers are unlimited. They believed that the powers of government are derived from the people and that because the people do not have the authority to act unjustly, they also can't invest the president with the power to act unjustly. If one is going to be a consistent originalist, one should recognize such moral limits to presidential power.

Of course, in the real world there are no consistent originalists and the only way to deal with an abuse of the power to pardon would be to impeach the president.