The Highest Law in the Land

How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy

By: Jessica Pishko

Narrated by: Nan McNamara

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

A Publishers Lunch NonFiction Buzz Book| Named Most Anticipated by Los Angeles Times

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-hear for fans of Michelle Alexander, Gilbert King, Elizabeth Hinton, and Kathleen Belew.

©2024 Jessica Pishko (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“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

"Blending superb reportage and indispensable history, Jessica Pishko’s book could not be more timely. The Highest Law in the Land is essential reading for anyone concerned about the unbridled power of law enforcement in 21st Century America. An absolutely fascinating and harrowing read.”—Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove

“Eye-opening account of the modern-day American sheriff”—Linda Greenhouse for New York Review of Books