The Highest Law in the Land

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Shortlisted for Columbia Journalism School’s J. Anthony Lukas Prize

A leading authority on sheriffs in America investigates the impunity with which sheriffs police their communities, alongside the troubling role they play in American life, law enforcement, and, increasingly, national politics.

What should be of grave concern to us all is that sheriffs are wholly unaccountable. They do not report to federal, state, or local executives, and sheriffs’ duties are often enshrined in state constitutions, making them effectively “above the law.” Sheriffs have become a flashpoint in the current politics of toxic masculinity, guns, white supremacy, and rural resentment. They played a role in the January 6 insurrection—their anti-federal government stance coming into perfect alignment with both far-right militia groups and former President Donald Trump. This rise of the sheriff in national politics and their increasing right-wing radicalization has been assisted by the revival of the so-called Constitutional Sheriff movement, which casts sheriffs as the “last line of defense” between citizens and a libertarian definition of freedom in this country. Such sheriffs have been embraced by white nationalists, the far right, and most factions of the GOP, who seek to attain and maintain power at all costs.

More than 95 percent of America’s three thousand sheriffs are white men. They employ 25 percent of sworn law enforcement officers. They are the only elected law enforcement, but nearly 60 percent of all sheriffs run unopposed, and because they have no term limits, many serve for decades. They patrol the streets, make traffic stops, execute arrest warrants, and investigate crimes. They run county jails that admit 4.9 million people every year, which puts them in contact with some of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised people in the community. 

Journalist Jessica Pishko deploys a real gumshoe reporting style and prefers to be in the room to get her story. She’s spent hours with the sheriffs she reports on. She’s attended far-right rallies where prominent sheriffs blast their rallying cries in order to get a sense of the audiences they’re reaching. She has signed up for Constitutional Sheriff training programs to immerse herself in the rhetoric. The result is a ground-shaking revelation about how this militant and unchecked law enforcement contingent sees itself and sees the rest of us.

A must-read for fans of Timothy Snyder, Jonathan Karl, Gilbert King, and Michelle Alexander.Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer who graduated from Harvard Law School and Columbia University’s MFA program. Her writings about criminal justice have been featured in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Appeal, The New Republic, The Nation, Slate, and The Guardian, among other publications. She has been awarded journalism fellowships from the Pulitzer Center and Type Investigations, and has provided policy guidance for criminal system reform nonprofits. After turning her attention to sheriffs in 2016, she served as a fellow in the Sheriff Accountability Project at the University of South Carolina School of Law, where she examined state laws related to sheriff elections and sheriff removal procedures. Her work was the first to put many of the issues related to sheriffs on the political map.US

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