Kurt Gödel, the great logician and philosopher, claimed that a loophole exists in the US constitution that would allow the president to establish himself as dictator. The story goes that he was about to expound on this theory at his hearing to obtain US citizenship but was cut off by Albert Einstein, lest his speculations ruin what should have been a routine proceeding.
I’ve been interested in this question since I first heard the story in college.
And to me it seems that Gödel must have been thinking of the pardon power. . . . Nothing particularly terrible has ever occurred due to presidential pardons. And yet, it is an extraordinarily broad power with no real checks or limiting principles.
Suppose Kash Patel shows up at FBI headquarters and says he wants to identify the most hardcore MAGA special agents and recruit them to a small elite team. What’s their job? To do illegal wiretaps against Trump’s political enemies in order to blackmail them. Someone on the team says, “Director that’s illegal! I’m all for egregious abuses of power, but I also don’t want to get in trouble.” And he says,” don’t worry, POTUS has you covered with pardons.”
Meanwhile, DC is not a state, which means that we technically don’t have any state laws or state court system. . . and all our local prosecutions are handled by a US attorney rather than an elected district attorney. And this means the president could pardon people for random muggings or assaults or murders in DC. Which is to say that if one of the president’s aides were to shoot an opposition member of Congress (or just an intra-party critic) on the street, the president could pardon him. It’s not just that the country could become a dictatorship in this way (any country can become a dictatorship), but it would be perfectly within the bounds of the constitution.
Monday, December 1, 2025
Kurt Gödel and the Pardon Loophole
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Which is to say that if one of the president’s aides were to shoot an opposition member of Congress (or just an intra-party critic) on the street, the president could pardon him. It’s not just that the country could become a dictatorship in this way (any country can become a dictatorship), but it would be perfectly within the bounds of the constitution.
It's almost as if a document laid out 236 years ago, and which was intentionally vaguely worded out of an overabundance of caution against centralization of power (which is a ploy that completely failed in short order after it was written), somehow isn't up to snuff when it comes to running a modern government and society in a global world full of both technologies and ideas the founders could never have imagined...
It's almost as if the Constitution is woefully outdated, and needs to have had many massive updates and revisions over its long lifetime - but those never happened because instead of treating it as a living document and pragmatic tool for enabling good governance that can change with our changing needs... we instead enshrined it on a pedestal as a sacrosanct golden idol to be worshiped in blind reverence without consideration for thought or reality.
But I'm sure everything is fine, and that - as ever - we just need to stay the course, because America is the best country that is, ever was, and ever will be!
/s
What a wonderful position to be in. Commit a crime today with the understanding Trump will pardon you tomorrow. What could go wrong?
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