I am glad I don’t live in a country where the penalty for criminal behavior includes having your tax returns released to the public.

I am doubly glad I don’t live in a country where the penalty for criminal behavior includes having your tax returns released to the public before you are convicted and indeed before you are ever charged.

I am triply glad that I don’t live in a country where the penalty for criminal behavior includes having your tax returns released to the public at the whim of your political opponents.

And I am quadruply glad that I don’t live in a country where those political opponents get to invent penalties that are not envisioned by any statute.

I wish many things for Donald Trump, and I am sure he would not want me to get most of my wishes. But it would be an outrage for the Ways and Means Committee of the House to release his returns under the current circumstances, where, it seems to me, the release is clearly intended as a punishment for some very bad acts that very clearly occurred.

On the other hand: I have long argued (see Chapter 15 of The Armchair Economist) that when voters make choices on the basis of promises that are ultimately not kept, they should have legal recourse in the form of a lawsuit against the politician who broke those promises. In 2016, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to release his tax returns as soon as they were not “under audit”. It’s not at all clear to me why this promise would have changed anyone’s vote, but presumably Trump (who has presumably thought about this harder than I have) believed it would sway at least some voters; otherwise why would he have made such a big deal about it?

In my ideal world, there would be a class-action suit against Trump by voters who relied on his 2016 promise to release these returns, and, after a trial, he might be ordered to fill the breach by releasing those returns today. One could argue that the Ways and Means Committee is simply bringing about my desired outcome by other means.

But: First, as I just said, in my ideal world, the order to release the returns would come after a trial. We have not had that trial. And second, I am actually very very glad that I do not live in a world where my personal policy preferences are implemented without first going through some sort of process whereby they become law. Like so many of my best ideas, this one is not yet a law. I’m glad I do live in a country where (by and large) non-laws are not enforced, even when I believe they ought to be laws.