Pardon me?

Henry Farrell ponders whether we should reform the pardon power of the president:

Looking more closely at what Nadler is saying, it seems to me that there are two distinct elements. One is the suggestion that the President not be allowed to pardon members of his/her own administration. This, I suspect, is the bit that Josh is leery of - I imagine that his thinking is that in a country where the prosecution is highly politicized (as in the US), the benefits of having the President able to overturn politically-driven prosecutions may outweigh the benefits. This, I think can be argued either way. But I can't see any very good argument against the second, admittedly more tentative element of Nadler's proposal - that the President's power to pardon be restricted during his/her final months in office.

It seems to me that what we want out of a pardon is to allow someone with no political accountability the opportunity to undo injustices.  A lot of people get convicted in this country because there was a prosecutor with the public breathing down his neck to DO SOMETHING. 

Empirically, it is an open question whether the pardon power is used that way or not.  But if we're going to ensure it's only going to be used when the voters can express their wrath, then we might as well not have the pardon power at all, it seems to me.

What about Marc Rich?  Or Nixon?  Taking the last first, that pardon would have passed both of Jerry Nadler's tests--Nixon was not Ford's subordinate, or in his administration, nor were any of the other conspirators.  Pardoning Nixon may have been a bad idea, but I tend to think not--the country would not have benefitted from a lengthy trial, especially since I think it very likely that the defense would have managed to get quite a bit of testimony on Johnson's behavior, which I've heard credibly argued, at least equalled, and inspired, Nixon's own.  Arguably, the reason the Democrats made so little fuss is that they knew they could not further destroy Nixon's name without also destroying Johnson and the Great Society.

As for Marc Rich . . . okay, so a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea.  But on a social level, so what?  Are rich people going to commit more tax fraud because they might, after more than a decade of living abroad as a fugitive, be able to donate a chunk to the Presidential library and thus secure a pardon?  What about this cries out for remedy beyond recrimination?