Is it possible a politician, or has it ever happened a politician run
under certain campaign promises, whatever they are (lower taxes, raise
pensions, or whatever from whatever political spectrum), and that they
sign a contract stating that if they don't comply with x promise they
made on the campaign, they are removed of all their assests, can't run
for public office anymore, or whatever?
Is this technically possible for politicians to sign a contract where
they are punished if they don't comply with their campaign promises,
or has it ever happened, as a solution for politicians to comply with
their campaign promises
No.
Documents prepared by politicians while running for office are prepared now and then and are sometimes signed by those politicians, although they rarely identify any penalty to the politician for breaching the contract. See, e.g., the GOP Contract With America in the 1994 election campaign for Congress in the United States. (Incidentally, while this was an effective campaign strategy and many of its promises were fulfilled, as the link indicates, it was breached in some respects: "A November 13, 2000, article by Edward H. Crane, president of the libertarian Cato Institute, stated, "the combined budgets of the 95 major programs that the Contract with America promised to eliminate have increased by 13%.")
But, campaign promises are not legally enforceable.
Plaintiffs provide no legal authority for the proposition that
political statements made during election campaigns constitute
enforceable promises; indeed, courts have long held that such
statements are not enforceable promises under similar theories. See
St. John's United Church of Christ v. F.A.A., 550 F.3d 1168, 1170
(D.C. Cir. 2008) (noting that political promises have “no legal force
whatsoever”); East Side Plating, Inc. v. City of Portland, No.
3:18-cv-01664-YY, 2019 WL 3979658, at *6 (D. Or. July 11, 2019)
(holding that statements made by city commissioners were “political
promises” not enforceable promises); Weinstein v. Trump, No. 17 Civ.
1018 (GBD), 2017 WL 6544635, at *4 n.5 (S.D.N.Y. Dec. 21, 2017)
(“[O]nce a candidate is elected to office, it is for the politicians
and the people they represent—not the courts—to decide which campaign
promises will be fulfilled and which will become abandoned rhetoric.”
); United States v. Washington, 887 F. Supp. 2d 1077, 1100 (D. Mont.
2012) (holding that “public statements were not promises but rather
statements of principle and intent in the political realm” (internal
quotation marks omitted)); Berg v. Obama, 574 F. Supp. 2d 509, 529
(E.D. Penn. 2008) (“[O]ur political system could not function if every
political message articulated by a campaign could be characterized as
a legally binding contract enforceable by individual voters.”); May
v. Kennard Indep. Sch. Dist., No. 9:96-CV-256, 1996 WL 768039, at *7
(E.D. Tex. Nov. 22, 1996) (“A political campaign promise is legally
insufficient to create a binding contract unless it is so intended by
the promisor and promisee.”).
Hardt v. City of Portland, No. 3:23-CV-01980-AN, 2024 WL 1286542, at *5 (D. Or. Mar. 26, 2024).
The “promises” that Plaintiff identifies are statements of principle
and intent in the political realm. They are not enforceable promises
under contract law.
Indeed, our political system could not function if every political
message articulated by a campaign could be characterized as a legally
binding contract enforceable by individual voters. Of course, voters
are free to vote out of office those politicians seen to have breached
campaign promises. Federal courts, however, are not and cannot be in
the business of enforcing political rhetoric.
Berg v. Obama, 574 F. Supp. 2d 509, 529 (E.D. Pa. 2008), aff'd, 586 F.3d 234 (3d Cir. 2009).
There are a number of legal reasons for this bottom line conclusion:
One reason for this is that it would conflict with the duty of a politician to exercise independent judgment at the time of actually making decisions.
Another is that campaign promises routinely require the cooperation of other political actors and a determination that it is legally possible to do what was promised. Often campaign promises assume that they will be able to get cooperation from the necessary people, but don't actually manage to achieve it. Impossibility is a defense to some contract lawsuits.
In the same vein, it is often challenging to determine if a political promise has been performed or has been breached, since their terms are often vague (e.g., "I'll take strong measures to fight crime."), and vagueness can be a defense to contractual liability.
If such a contract is made, the person on the other side of the contract would have to have to have also agreed to it, despite not having to do anything in exchange (often it is legally impossible to even prove that you voted for the candidate making the promise).
Yet another reason that campaign promises are not enforceable is that they are not supported by consideration. If a politician receives personal benefit in exchange for promising to take official action, that is criminal bribery. If a politician receives no personal benefit in exchange for promising to take official action, then there is not a contract supported by consideration. Spending to help a candidate win office is basically conclusively presumed to be for the purpose of getting the candidate elected "as is" and is not conditional on any particular official acts if the candidate is elected.
There is also a closely related question of standing. To sue over something, you have to show individualized personal harm from conduct that forms the basis of the lawsuit. But the benefits or harms caused by a broken political promise are rarely individualized and instead are shared by the whole society, unless the promise amounts to bribery.
Then, there is the immunity from liability of the speech and debate clause of the U.S. Constitution for Congress, and similar laws in other legislative bodies (e.g. most states and Australia's federal legislature and the U.K. Parliament). The speech and debate clause for the U.S. Congress states:
The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for
their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury
of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony
and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their
Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to
and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either
House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.
U.S. Constitution (1789), Article I, Section 6, Clause 1.
This means that legislators are immune from civil or criminal liability from their official acts subject only to some narrow exceptions set forth in the clause. So, speech and debate clause immunity from liability would override any civil contract liability arising out of the legislator's legislative conduct. As explained at the link:
it is well established that the Clause serves to secure the
independence of the federal legislature by providing Members of
Congress and their aides with immunity from criminal prosecutions or
civil suits that stem from acts taken within the legislative sphere.
As succinctly described by the Court, the Clause’s immunity from
liability applies even though their conduct, if performed in other
than legislative contexts, would in itself be unconstitutional or
otherwise contrary to criminal or civil statutes. This general
immunity principle forms the core of the protections afforded by the
Clause.
See, e.g., Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U.S. 168, 204 (1881) (no liability for contempt of court for a member of Congress who refused to testify about his official Congressional acts in a lawsuit arising out of a real estate partnership to which the member of Congress was a party).
Even when no immunity from liability due to a constitution or statute, courts may devise a common law doctrine of immunity from civil liability for official acts as they have in the case of the U.S. President.
As a practical matter, if such liability existed, every elected official would be sued in almost every election cycle because somebody could claim credibly that at last some campaign promise was broken by that politician, leading to massive satellite litigation and unreasonably discouraging people from running for office.
Instead, our system leaves enforcement of broken campaign promises to voters who must decide if breaking a campaign promise was so serious that other good things that happened when a candidate was elected should be outweighed by the broken promise.
No legal system of which I am aware, anywhere in the world, allows campaign promises made by elected officials to be legally enforced. I am not aware of even a single case in history in any country where legal enforcement of such a promise has been allowed, although I'm not omnipotent and maybe somewhere, sometime, this did happen in some obscure case.
