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Scott Alexander in his recent links post highlights an interesting idea on how to deal with violation of court orders, make them an outlaw , https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/links-for-april-2025 (Edit: To clarify, this is most likely not a fully serious idea. Scott would understand how difficult it would be to actually implement, I'm just analyzing it as if it were serious and how that would work with US law.)
Taking this idea seriously, it's hard to see how it manifests in the US. Assuming no change to the constitution, which is possible but I think unlikely to convince enough citizens to go for such a change, the protection of the law is clearly outlined to any person within our jurisdiction in the 14th amendment.
In theory we could radically reinterpret jurisdiction as being "within the law" and thus said "outlaws" being outside the law would not be in jurisdiction but that is a pretty far stretch. It also makes an interesting logical question, if they're outside of US jurisdiction then are they really defying the courts anymore?
Another possible theory could hinge on a different odd and radical reinterpretation of wording,
A radical interpretation of "life" or "liberty" could include removing the status of personhood from violators, therefore removing them from the "any person" line.
Both of these are incredibly radical. The US system is not fully originalist but even the more broader minded living constitutionalists and textualists tend to take the original intent into some amount of consideration and there isn't really any mention of stripping personhood away. And even then, it's still a stretch that one can take away personhood when our definition of person has little to do with one's involvement in the legal system anyway. I don't think many would contest Shakespeare or Genghis Khan as "people" despite being born and dead before the US even existed. And defining outlaws as outside the law could end up suggesting we can not enforce rules on them either if they decide to do something like steal or murder and just hope a citizen takes action to fix it.
Even more so, it remains to be seen if such a thing would even be necessary. I'm not aware of many cases where a ruled upon contempt of court hasn't been resolved in some sort of favorable manner for the courts (an arrest, a fine, obeying the courts after the order, etc) and the ones where it doesn't happen are people who hide away or flee the country. Declaring someone an outlaw and stripping away their legal protections doesn't really help too much in the police not being able to find them, unless we want the outlaw status to allow police to violate the rights of non-outlaws in their search for outlaws.
And even the most famous examples of court defiance tend to be apocryphal historical information, a misunderstanding of the orders by laymen or a mix of the two. Sometimes political leaders will even mislead about their actions, presenting an appearance of "fighting back" for their base while actually pivoting to another strategy that hasn't been ruled on yet. Actually serious major defiance of court rulings just hasn't really happened and thus the need for an alternative solution seems questionable IMO.
Ok but let's assume that the constitution does get changed. Maybe Scott runs for president on the "Let's change the constitution to make outlaws" platform, and the voters all surge for pro outlaw amendment congressmen and governors, and even the politicians currently on the fence are convinced of this idea. What then? That's already been covered decently in depth by Scott years ago and I don't know if I can add too much for this. I don't have much knowledge about the medieval Icelandic system beyond what I learned from this article. But regardless I think the likelihood of such a change is so low the discussion is purely in the hypothetical at this point.
More likely IMO (although still highly unlikely) would be to adopt the punishment of exile. Why do I think this is relatively more likely? It has history in the Roman legal system and British law systems which are already major inspirations for the American legal system so adopting anything from them is more precedented and that precedent may be more convincing to the population for a new amendment.
Scott of course shows his true colors again as a rabid partisan, by advocating literally unpersoning his political opponents.
In terms of the actual proposal, I don't see him argue in any sensible way why contempt isn't an adequate method of enforcement. Sure the courts may be slow sometimes, but they can be fast when they want to be. And his proposed "unpersoning" would also require the courts to make a move, so no reason for that to be any faster.
Scott Alexander is hysterically overrated just because he actually criticized wokes a bit back during the era where the spineless techies that make up his fandom were busy cowering and licking progressive boots.
That's not fair, he used to be a good writer that used to be able to show he properly understood the arguments he disagreed with.
He used to be a somewhat ordinary young man with an eclectic reading habit, allowing him to mix weird rationality ideas while still understanding the opposite perspective. Then he became an incredibly successful and popular writer and moved to San Francisco where he now lives with his wife, children and mistress.
No matter how much he tries, if he does still try, he can’t really empathise with the people outside the blessed circle. They’re just too different from him now. At the same time, general political polarisation has continued to the extent that I doubt he ever meets any right wingers any more, even the weird kind.
It’s the same problem that’s occurred since time immemorial and is the reason why (as I understand it) Republican politicians were discouraged from spending too much time in Washington.
That was part of the 1994 Republican Revolution under Newt Gingrich. It wasn't just 'discouragement' either- it was a organizational-restructuring, as the rules of Congress were changed to facilitate frequent travel out of DC. Most notably, Congressional business workflows were centered on the mid-week, so that key votes were Tuesday-Thursday, to make Monday/Friday travel days more viable.
It was part of 'proving independence from Washington' and 'staying in touch with your constituents.' It is the oft-forgotten root of regular complaints that Congress spends too little time in Washington compared to the past, and the associated complaints that Congress gets less done (because they are present less) and don't know eachother as well. On the other hand, it arguably contributes to the dynamic of voters loving their congressperson but hating congress.
It was also, critically, a period where Republicans were also incentivized to not bring their families to D.C., which in turns means the wives and children who stay behind aren't culturally socialized into the blue-tribe-dominated national capital region. But it also means, by extension, that Democratic representative families under the same dynamics aren't socializing with more red-leaning counterparts, and are free to be even bluer influences on their Congressional-spouses.
This is an oft-forgotten / underappreciated rules-level dynamic of national-level political centralization and elite-consensus.
Keeping key elites spending time together and away from their own power-bases that could foster a sense of disconnect from the central authority has been a national cohesion strategy since before Louis XIV and Versailles. This helped political centralization by giving the monarch an easier time keeping an eye on everyone if they were in one part. But it also allowed for political homogenization/consensus-building/shared-identity cultivation of a common French identity amongst elites, as the French nobility were forced by proximity (and tactical political interests) to get along and socialize. Court politics is infamous in fiction for political infighting and drama, but it does create paradigms for collective understandings, interests, and identities, hence the divide of the french estates leading to the French revolution. Nobles infight against eachother, but unite in common cause against challenges to their collective interests and privileges.
Congressional committee placement politics isn't an exact analog to the French Monarchy making appointments dependent on remaining at court, but there are more than a few parallels. If you're not missing key votes because you're spending time with constituents- because Congressional workflows are focused on Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday execution- then you're not losing your chance at valuable appointments to powerful Congressional committees. The lower the opportunity cost of not-being in the capital, the greater the opportunity-gains of being elsewhere for fundraising / political events / etc. And, again, you're away from your family less if you're free to return to them more often.
These are changes that the Congressional Democrats have kept even when they recaptured Congress. They get many of the same benefits as well. And as the D.C. area is something like 90% Democratic for a variety of reasons, it's hard to see them convincing (or, frankly, forcing) the Republicans to revert to the pre-Gingrich status quo in the name of homogenizing them in an expected blue direction.
Interestingly, it's also a dynamic being actively pursued in the reverse by the movement of property, and not just people.
You can arguably see an implicit effort-to-reverse Federal consensus-centralization ongoing right now, as Trump attempts to push the federal bureaucracy away from the capital region.
One of the less-commented efforts the Trump administration is pursuing is moving federal agencies outside of the DC area and to other states. This has been overshadowed by the media coverage of the personnel management, but the property management is (almost) as important.
Among the earliest executive orders was a direction for agencies to propose relocations away from DC and to other states. This purportedly on cost-reasons. DC property is expensive to maintain, employee allowances are higher to make up for the regional cost of living, etc. The actual cost of moving has to be balanced against savings are likely to provide, but states have an incentive to take some of that cost for their own long-term gain in getting the relocated agencies.
Almost as importantly, Congress persons have an incentive to approve federal agency relocations to the benefit of their own state. Even Democratic politicians who might personally hate Trump. Which is to say, Federal government divestment from DC offers bargaining chips / horses to trade in the upcoming year(s) of budget negotiations.
That this is also is likely to have an employee-composition impact, as the hyper-blue DC environment those agencies recruit and socialize and network within get replaced with more purple environments that are geographically dispersed, is probably not going to be a publicized or recognized until it's as locked-in as the Gingrich Congressional travel changes.
As has been seen with some shutdowns like the USAID shutdown, DC-based federal employees have often indicated they want to stay in the DC area. This is natural. Even if they were offered an opportunity to keep their jobs if agencies were relocated instead of shutdown, some percent would refuse and seek other employment in DC. This is just a matter of statistics. It is also an area of precedent. In the Trump 1 administration, nearly 90% of DC-based Bureau of Land Management employees retired or quit rather than relocated to Grand Junction, Colorado.
That's bad if you think an equivalent dynamic to, say, the DC Headquarters of the Justice Department would lose vital experience and expertise and informal coordination with other agencies. On the other hand, if you don't think the headquarters of the US Justice Department should be rooted in the swamp that is 90% blue, and less than a mile from where a 'Black Live Matter' mural used to be maintained on the street...
And once departments are separated, the sort of informal coordination that can occur if you and a friend/ally you know in another part of the government can meet in the same town also goes away. Inter-government lobbying is a lot harder if you are cities apart. Inter-department coordination is also, and almost as importantly, a lot harder to do without a document trail.
And this is where one could infer a non-stated motive for the resistance-shy Trump. One of the only reasons the US electorate learned that the Biden administration white house was coordinating with the Georgia anti-Trump case despite denials was because one of the Georgia prosecutor assistances invoiced the White House for the travel expenses for in-person engagements. In-person meetings, in turn, are one of the ways to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests or Congressional subpoenas for communications over government systems.
This is where the Versailles metaphor comes back, but as an inverse of sorts. It was easier for Louis the XIVth to keep an eye on and manage the nobility when they were in one place. They were scheming, sure, but he could keep watch of them in a single physical location where he controlled the coordination contexts. Trump / the Republicans do not control the coordination context of DC. They can, however, increase political control over the bureaucracy by physically separating it across multiple physical locations, where they have easier means to monitor inter-node coordination.
It is also an effort that will be exceptionally hard for the Democrats to reverse, if they try to. It is a lot easier to divest and reorganize government institutions when you have a trifecta than when you don't. It is also much easier to give up federal property in DC to the benefit of states than it is to get state Congressional representatives to vote to strip their states of jobs and inflows for the sake of DC.
Which means that federal agencies that depart DC will probably not return in the near future. And the longer they stay away, the longer that local employment hiring filters into organizational cultures at the lowest levels. The more that Federal employees have their spouses and children shaped by the less-blue-than-DC environments, and thus shape them in turn. The less engaged, and involved, they can be in the beltway culture.
The Trump administration DC divestment are arguably going to have long-term effects on affected parts of the federal bureaucracy on par with Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution affects on Congress in the 90's. Affected agencies will be less compositionally composed of, less socially exposed to, and less culturally aligned to Blue-dominated DC in ways that will only become apparent decades from now.
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