Rise of the ‘Constitutional Sheriffs’
The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy, by Jessica Pishko, Dutton, 480 pages, $32
The Power of the Badge: Sheriffs and Inequality in the United States, by Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman, The University of Chicago Press, 304 pages, $25
In the home stretch of the presidential race, an Ohio sheriff was stripped of his role providing election security after he compared immigrants to swarms of locusts and asked residents to write down the addresses of yards with signs for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Two new books—The Highest Law in the Land, by reporter Jessica Pishko, and The Power of the Badge, by political scientists Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman—argue that such behavior isn’t unusual. The American sheriff, they say, is a particularly dangerous vector for a right-wing project to take over the country.
Sheriffs, Pishko writes, “enable and legitimize the far right’s ideas, tactics, and political goals.” Likewise, Farris and Holman “suggest that the design of the office—and the individuals who serve in it—challenge the central tenets of democracy.”
Both books make some welcome additions to the literature on policing. Sheriffs have been understudied compared to major police departments, despite employing a quarter of all sworn law enforcement officers and handling 9 million to 10 million jail admissions a year. Pishko, Farris, and Holman make a convincing case that sheriffs frequently abuse their office without meaningful consequences.
But gauging the threat that sheriffs’ politics pose to democracy is a trickier effort.Each book focuses heavily on the “constitutional sheriffs” movement—an effort to recruit sheriffs to nullify laws they consider unconstitutional, such as gun controls and COVID-19 restrictions.
The alleged authority to do this lies in the peculiar nature of the office. In the flowchart of federalism, sheriffs are islands unto themselves. They’re not typically under the direct control of mayors, county boards, or governors. They set and pursue their own policies. The “constitutional sheriff” movement claims that, because of this, sheriffs are the highest authority within their jurisdictions when it comes to enforcing the Constitution, higher than any federal agent or even the president—hence Pishko’s title.
This is all a result of the office’s history. Sheriffs proudly trace their roots back to pre-Norman England’s “shire-reeves.” British colonists brought the English office of sheriff with them to America, where our ideals and geography transformed it. The colonists’ democratic instincts led them to make sheriffs elected positions rather than appointed. As America expanded westward, sheriffs were often the only law enforcement on the frontier, where they earned a s
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