Amnesty Transactional

“Jesus,” Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash notes in The Presidential Pardon, “is the most celebrated person not to receive a pardon.” 

The Presidential Pardon: The Short Clause with a Long, Troubled History 
by Saikrishna Bangalore Prakash
Harvard University Press, 208 pp. 

Quite so. But second place must go, I think, to the Prophet Daniel, whose biblical story illustrates why a pardon power is needed. During the Babylonian Captivity, the story goes, Daniel became a valued...