I'm curious what the federalist papers say on the topic. Those are always good to get a full meaning behind what's in the Constitution.
I believe Oceander's post #52 destroys the scenario of a POTUS pardoning himself. And I don't think it takes a lawyer to figure this out.
In fact, I think that any lawyer who "finds" that the Constitution was intending, among other things, to give a POTUS an automatic "get out of jail free card," then that lawyer is a loophole-minded crook who cares not one whit for what our Framers actually intended.
Sadly, we do have a lot of shrewd but decidedly bad lawyers. (Ask Prince Hal how pervasive the problem is. Ask Thomas Jefferson how dangerous "activist judges" are.) Bad lawyers are oddly lawless legalists in that they have no regard for, much less respect for, the
spirit of the law. And we cannot discern the spirit of the Constitution unless we notice that the entire point of drafting the Constitution was to create a
document that would serve as the
head of the Body Politic. In a terribly important manner of speaking, the Constitution was intended to make sure that we have no human being (or committee of human beings) despotically ruling us. To use Plato's language, our Republic needed a Benevolent Despot to rule us, but our wise Framers realized that we needed to install that Benevolent Despot in the form of a
document that supremely rules the Body Politic, not a person, not even a power-grabbing branch of government.
Even when we confess that a document drafted by the wisest assemblage of political philosophers in history still poses exegetical challenges for interpretation, a proper hermeneutic must consider the above-stated purpose of the Constitution. Constitutional law is not to be handled as a bunch of inadvertently unclosed loopholes opening up opportunities for lawlessness. Lawlessness invariably leads to tyranny.
As George Washington himself confessed, he was to function in a way of presiding in a way of decency and order under the Constitution, not by ruling as the Emperor (Despot) of the United States. Impeachment was the Constitutional provision intended as a necessary provision for reining him in if he becomes lawless--after which impeachment he is obviously prosecutable as an accused criminal, for the final resolution of his high crimes and misdemeanors. But if a POTUS has a "get out of jail free card," he can do monumental, tyrannical damage even under the
relatively minor threat of impeachment.
Finally, if the loophole a__holes had their way, they
would give a "get out of jail free card" to a POTUS whom they liked (or who paid for their lawyerly fees). The whole scenario is so sick, so disgusting that I doubt that the Federalist Papers would have deigned to cover the matter of a
President pardoning himself. Perhaps the Federalist Papers do talk about the reasons for giving the POTUS the right to pardon others, but I suspect that even Alexander Hamilton would turn over in his grave if he knew we were even
discussing the matter of whether the right to pardon includes a POTUS pardoning himself.
Even if legalistic lawyers claim that the Constitution allows such a scenario,
it definitely does not. The very idea is an insult to our Republic.