Executive Clemency, Presidential Pardon, and Constitutional Limits in Democratic Rule of Law: A Systematic Literature Review

This systematic literature review synthesizes recent on executive clemency, presidential pardon, amnesty, commutation and constitutional limits in democratic rule-of-law systems. The review addresses a central constitutional problem: clemency remains necessary as mercy, correction and transitional instrument, yet it can also become a channel of impunity, political privilege or interference with judicial finality when exercised without limits. Using a PRISMA-based design, the study used one integrated Scopus Boolean string covering clemency, pardon, amnesty, commutation, constitutionalism, rule of law, separation of powers, judicial independence, accountability, human rights and serious crimes. The initial search identified 1,999 articles. After database filters for year 2021-2026, document type article, English language, journal source type and final publication stage, 278 articles remained. Title and abstract screening reduced the corpus to 104 articles; open-access eligibility produced 50 full texts; and full-text screening resulted in 35 articles for final synthesis. The findings generate five outputs: a conceptual map of executive clemency, a typology of constitutional limits, a Clemency-Separation of Powers Framework, a Serious Crime Clemency Limitation Model, and a Constitutional Clemency Limitation Framework. The review concludes that clemency should not be treated as an absolute personal prerogative, but as a constitutional power requiring a clear legal basis, substantive limits, institutional consideration, procedural fairness, transparency, accountability and human-rights-sensitive review.