by Jessica Pishko
Dutton
9/17/2024, hardcover
SKU: 9780593471319
A leading authority on sheriffs investigates the impunity with which they police their communities, alongside the troubling role they play in American life, law enforcement, and, increasingly, national politics.
The figure of the American sheriff has loomed large in popular imagination, though given the outsize jurisdiction sheriffs have over people's lives, the office of sheriffs remains a gravely under-examined institution. Locally elected, largely unaccountable, and difficult to remove, the country's over three thousand sheriffs, mostly white men, wield immense power--making arrests, running county jails, enforcing evictions and immigration laws--with a quarter of all U.S. law enforcement officers reporting to them. In recent years there's been a revival of "constitutional sheriffs," who assert that their authority supersedes that of legislatures, courts, and even the president. They've protested federal mask and vaccine mandates and gun regulations, railed against police reforms, and, ultimately, declared themselves election police, with many endorsing the "Big Lie" of a stolen presidential election. They are embraced by far-right militia groups, white nationalists, the Claremont Institute, and former president Donald Trump, who sees them as allies in mass deportation and border policing.
How did a group of law enforcement officers decide that they were "above the law?" What are the stakes for local and national politics, and for America as a multi-racial democracy?
Blending investigative reporting, historical research, and political analysis, author Jessica Pishko takes us to the roots of why sheriffs have become a flashpoint in the current politics of toxic masculinity, guns, white supremacy, and rural resentment, and uncovers how sheriffs have effectively evaded accountability since the nation's founding.
A must-read for fans of Michelle Alexander, Gilbert King, Elizabeth Hinton, and Kathleen Belew.
Reviews:
"Deep reporting and even deeper intelligence mark this invaluable contribution to the chronicle of our decaying democracy. Jessica Pishko is brave, indeed, taking on the metastasizing movement of little big men who call themselves 'constitutional sheriffs, ' and use their legal delusions to promote white supremacism across the country. But The Highest Law in the Land reaches beyond the current crisis to reveal how the very idea of the sheriff, like the 'sheriff's president, ' Donald Trump, wages war against the hope of democracy. Read this essential book to preserve that hope, and to stay safe on county roads." -- Jeff Sharlet, New York Times bestselling author of The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War
"In her new book The Highest Law in the Land, Jessica Pishko shines a much needed spotlight on the right wing extremism brewing in Sheriff's offices across the country and asks the tough question about whether we still need this inherently problematic institution." -- Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing
"As this nation seeks to make sense of the alarming rise of far-right extremism as well as the excessive power and everyday abuses of law enforcement, Pishko's latest study of American sheriffs is a startling must-read. As she makes clear, these threats to our democracy are inexorably connected--sharing not just insidious ideologies and ugly practices, but also extraordinary power and popularity. That local sheriffs drive this recent and most pressing danger is something that we overlook at our peril." -- Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy
About the Author:
Jessica Pishko is a journalist and lawyer with a JD from Harvard Law School and an MFA from Columbia University. She has been reporting on the criminal legal system for a decade, with a focus on the political power of sheriffs since 2016. In addition to her newsletter Posse Comitatus, her writings have been featured in The New York Times, Politico, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, The Appeal, Slate, and Democracy Docket. She has been awarded journalism fellowships from the Pulitzer Center and Type Investigations and was a 2022 New America Fellow. A longtime Texas resident, she currently lives with her family in North Carolina.