Ten books for understanding the “Constitutional Sheriff” movement

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.

Pishko's new book is The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.

At Lit Hub she tagged ten books for understanding the far right “Constitutional Sheriff” movement, including:

Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America

While Barkun’s book was published in 2003, it is one of the first books to examine conspiracy theories and why they appeal to their adherents. Barkun defines two qualities of conspiracy theories: “millennialism,” or a belief in a final encounter between good and evil, and “stigmatized knowledge,” which we might now describe as “alternative facts” and includes vaccine skepticism and beliefs in UFOs.

What happens when democracy is replaced by conspiracy theories that question the very essence of expertise? Well, Barkun might say, we get Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. endorsing Donald Trump for president.

Read about another entry on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue