When journalist and legal scholar Jessica Pishko set out to write The Highest Law in the Land, she didn’t expect to uncover one of the most potent threats to criminal justice reform and democratic governance in America today. Her book, which began as a deep dive into overlooked rural justice systems, has since become a crucial resource for understanding the rise of constitutional sheriffs—a movement that fuses hardline law enforcement with far-right ideology and Trumpist populism.
“I think rural criminal justice systems are extremely important to study,” Pishko said in an interview on Everyday Injustice. “The punishment the criminal system metes out is simply uneven. If you cross a county line, you will get a much harsher sentence and a huge bail—$20,000 for drug possession in some places, when in San Francisco, you might not even be arrested.”
At the heart of her reporting is the figure of the sheriff: a local law enforcement official whose power is often underestimated—especially by urban-centered reformers. “Most people who do criminal justice work live in cities,” Pishko said. “They don’t feel sheriffs are relevant. But sheriffs are incredibly powerful, especially in rural and suburban counties where they run the jails, oversee immigration enforcement, and enforce bail policies.”
Pishko’s book shows that sheriffs are more than just county cops—they are elected officials who operate with wide discretion and little oversight. And in the modern era, that authority has become a vessel for authoritarian ideology.
At the center of Pishko’s book is the constitutional sheriff movement, a loosely affiliated network of sheriffs who claim that their authority supersedes that of the federal government. “The name makes it sound like it’s about the Constitution,” Pishko said. “But it’s really a legal-ish movement. It uses the language of the Constitution to legitimize what is essentially a far-right agenda.”
That agenda, according to Pishko, includes deep resistance to federal authority, opposition to gun control and vaccine mandates, and an absolutist interpretation of property rights. But it also includes something more dangerous: a fusion of political theology and law enforcement.
“They don’t see the Constitution as a living document,” she said. “They see it as a kind of holy scripture. And any attempt to reinterpret it—on guns, on reproductive rights, on equality—is seen not just as wrong but as heretical. That’s why the Trump Bible includes the Constitution in the back. It’s become part of a sacred text.”
This ideology, once confined to the fringes, has found a new home in Trump-era populism. “Sheriffs say, ‘We were elected, so we have a mandate,’” Pishko said. “That sounds a lot like Trump. It’s about using the ballot box to claim unchecked power.”
Though the movement has its roots in libertarian opposition to federal overreach and racial integration, it has evolved into something more coherent and alarming. “It’s not just anti-government,” she said. “It’s anti-equality. It opposes racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and gender equality. It’s a right-wing populist movement cloaked in the legitimacy of law enforcement.”
In that sense, the constitutional sheriff movement doesn’t merely reflect the far right—it enables it. “When the people enforcing the law are also the ones undermining it, you can’t just rely on prosecution,” she said. “These are the people who are supposed to be upholding the system.”
Pishko noted how this dynamic played out after the protests of 2020 and the insurrection on Jan. 6. “We started to see sheriffs openly align themselves with right-wing militias, talk about resisting federal orders, and refuse to enforce laws they disagreed with,” she said. “It was impossible to ignore.”
Her reporting revealed that these sheriffs weren’t just supporting Trump—they were operationalizing his vision of impunity and force. “He said he would ‘unleash the police,’ and that resonated deeply with them,” Pishko said. “They want to be the enforcers of a political and cultural order. Not law, but order—as they define it.”
As Pishko’s reporting unfolded, her view on the sheriff’s office itself evolved. “When I began the book, I saw it as a criminal justice reform project,” she said. “But as I kept reporting and looked at the history, it became hard to argue that the institution could be salvaged.”
She pointed to examples like body cameras, which sheriffs initially resisted, then co-opted to maintain the appearance of accountability while continuing abusive practices. “Every reform is met with a backlash 50 times the size of the ask,” she said. “The system is designed to protect itself.”
She also described how sheriffs often justify inaction by citing loyalty to their peers. “Even those who understand the problem will say, ‘I can’t do that—other sheriffs would get upset,’” she said. “It’s a kind of fraternity that reinforces the status quo.”
And unlike police chiefs, sheriffs are elected. That means they can campaign on extremist platforms—and once in office, wield their authority without meaningful checks. “They’re treated as co-equal with other county officials, and that creates a paralysis around accountability,” Pishko said.
What makes the sheriff’s role uniquely dangerous in this political moment, she argues, is the combination of coercive power and democratic legitimacy. “They can say, ‘I was elected. I have a mandate,’” she said. “And people are reluctant to challenge that because we’re trained to think of elections as sacrosanct.”
In that sense, sheriffs embody a populist authoritarianism—claiming to represent the will of the people while using the tools of the state to suppress dissent, marginalize vulnerable communities, and resist oversight. “It’s the same logic Trump uses,” Pishko said. “They see themselves not just as law enforcers, but as moral guardians. And that’s what makes them so hard to dislodge.”
If there is a way forward, Pishko suggests it begins with confronting the mythology of the sheriff itself. “We have to ask whether this office should exist at all,” she said. “It’s not just about bad apples. The institution is structured to resist reform and amplify reactionary power.”Jessica Pishko’s The Highest Law in the Land is a sobering reminder that some of the gravest threats to American democracy are local, entrenched, and dressed in a badge. It is also a call to rethink how we understand law enforcement—not as neutral executors of justice, but as deeply political actors shaping the future of power in America.
““Sheriffs say, ‘We were elected, so we have a mandate,’” Pishko said. “That sounds a lot like Trump.”
That sounds a lot like Obama, “elections have consequences”.
“Her book, which began as a deep dive into overlooked rural justice systems, has since become a crucial resource for understanding the rise of constitutional sheriffs”
Crucial resource? To whom, leftists?
“talk about resisting federal orders, and refuse to enforce laws they disagreed with”
That sounds exactly like what we’re seeing today in blue states and democrat jurisdictions.
I read a few reviews of the book on Amazon. it’s what I suspected:
“If you want to learn about the system of power that is the local government and local elected officals such as the Sheriffs and some of their misconduct, or read something slighy objective than this book is not for you. If you want to read a book with a very particular view point, which is Sheriffs are bad because they tend to lean republican politically than this is the book for you.”
“The author makes no attempt at a fair and balanced perspective. It is obvious from the start that she has a complete distain for law enforcement in general, as well as the opinions of the other half of the country. Her feelings and personal viewpoints are intertwined with her research and always cast a negative light. She even seeks to diminish the validity of the existence of the very position. While she casts aspersions at the sheriff’s she labels as right wing or constitutional sheriffs and decries their ambitions to reshape their communities into their world view, she fails to make any comparisons any other high-level political figure doing the exact same thing (“make America great again” or “change we can believe in”). Nor does she acknowledge that the purpose of having locally elected officials is because local citizens may have a different world view than anonymous bureaucrats at the state and federal level.”
It’s amazing how you can shortcut knowledge by not reading the book yourself.
I’ll read it right after I finish reading the last book you recommended we read: “White Fragility” :-|
Having just waited 90 minutes in the hot sun to show the Davis Police where a woman was hiding who had been seen and clearly photographed trespassing in a neighbor’s backyard trying to steal bikes, and having the cops tell me they weren’t going to do anything because, “they already talked to her”, I say bring on the Constitutional Sheriffs to Davis.
The more the far-left goes bonkers on stuff like this, the more I say, ‘f*ck you’. I prefer my law enforcement, um . . . enforce the law.
This issue became salient when the sheriff in Maricopa County in Arizona decided he had the right to defy the federal government. The basic fact is that local governments have no authority independent of the state in which they reside, and that includes the sheriff. The sheriff must be subservient to state law and policy. They cannot defy the state, and in turn cannot defy the federal government except to the extent that the state decides it has a dispute with the federal government. This isn’t about political ideology–it’s about holding to the rules that we have set down for governing.