Campaign Action
The reason most laws come into being is very simple: at one point, there was no law against some particular transgression because society did not contemplate such a thing would even be necessary. But at some later point, one specific doofus somewhere proves them wrong.
Perhaps they find a loophole in other laws that allow them to commit what would otherwise be a crime if they somersault through all the other extant prohibitions in a particularly acrobatic way. This would be the Wall Street model.
Or perhaps society never even imagined a potential transgression would ever even come about. Surely anyone who contemplated doing such a thing would be deterred by mere ethics or morality or basic common sense and we would not have to write that particular thing down. This is the path that leads to local ordinances like the owners of African elephants are not allowed to park them on city streets overnight, or cannon fire between the hours of 7pm and 5am is strictly prohibited.
We previously did not have a law stating would-be applicants to our highest office were required to provide the public with their financial information, such as tax returns, because until Donald Trump came along the requirement that the president not be a possible foreign crime syndicate-linked crook or confidence man or exploitative two-bit grifter had been a requirement that all parties thought went without saying. It didn't, and so now in the absence of ethical Republicans in Congress state legislatures are stepping in to patch the hole.
Lawmakers in more than two dozen states—mostly Democrats, but a few Republicans—have introduced bills intended to compel Trump to do what mass demonstrations and public shaming have thus far failed to accomplish. As written, the bills would require all candidates for president to release income tax returns in order to appear on that state's ballot. New Jersey's bill passed both houses of the state Legislature last month, although Republican Gov. Chris Christie is unlikely to sign it into law.
If the election outcome had been different, of course, Chris Christie would not only be eagerly signing the law but would perch himself at the front gates of an Iowa hog farm while doing so, grunting to every passing microphone about the importance of holding elected officials to account.
But this is where we are now. We once had an ethical norm that, after Watergate, was thought to be a basic requirement for the office. And it was—up until a man who simply didn't want to abide by such petty things ran for office. So now the rest of government is scrambling and squabbling to decide whether it truly ought to be a requirement, or whether perhaps the era of not wanting crooks and con artists in office is over and we ought to be moving on to other concerns.
If tax weekend protests around the country are any indication, the public is not ready to give up that ground quite yet. But it will be interesting to see how it plays out.