Other parts of the federal government will follow court orders.

Another important factor is the institutional role of the Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ’s primary function is to represent the interests of the United States in federal court.30 In order to perform this function effectively—that is, to win cases in court—the DOJ must maintain a certain level of credibility with the federal judiciary. The DOJ would have difficulty maintaining that credibility if its “client” (the federal government) threatened to violate adverse federal court orders. Accordingly, the DOJ has a strong institutional incentive to push the rest of the federal executive branch to abide by federal court judgments. 31 These institutional incentives are bolstered by the culture among the attorneys at the DOJ. These attorneys were trained in a legal community that has long promoted compliance with federal court orders.32 Indeed, it likely does not occur to many lawyers at the DOJ that defiance is a viable, much less legal, option.