The Sheriff's Constitution

• Pages: 1041-1106
• Date: 01 May 2025
• Published date: 01 May 2025
• Author: Farhang Heydari
• Subject Matter: Derecho Civil

The Sheriff’s Constitution

FARHANG HEYDARI*

The county sheriff is unique among our nation’s law enforcers, with an

ancient pedigree, elected status, and special protections as a state constitu-

tional off‌icer. But these factors combine to cause a recurrent problem—

elected sheriffs often assert for themselves the power to refuse to enforce

criminal laws of their choosing. Today’s constitutional sheriffs—a group of

sheriffs who view themselves as the highest authority in their county,

answerable only to their electorate—are the latest manifestation of this

ethos, declaring opposition to gun control measures, pandemic restric-

tions, environmental protections, and more. Lest one think these nonen-

forcement decisions are entirely one-sided, other sheriffs have declared

opposition to immigration and abortion restrictions.

This challenge to the rule of law has f‌lourished in part because our

modern criminal system embraces enforcement discretion, offering only

the thinnest of constitutional backstops. In lieu of legal limits, even blan-

ket nonenforcement of certain crimes is managed primarily through political

checks, such as elections or intervention by other levels of government. But

these constraints have serious shortcomings.

This Article proposes reviving judicially-enforceable limits on nonen-

forcement discretion modeled on a now-forgotten understanding of the

sheriff’s duties to investigate and enforce. For much of our history, state

courts played an important role in supervising nonenforcement discretion.

Routinely called upon to determine when a sheriff’s failure to enforce the

law amounted to neglect of duty, courts across the country developed a rela-

tively nuanced understanding regarding the permissibility of nonenforce-

ment. This precedent rebuked sheriff nullif‌ication but did not naively

demand perfect enforcement, thus limiting lawlessness while preserving

some f‌lexibility. Over time, however, this approach largely fell by the

wayside, replaced with broad pronouncements of enforcement discretion.

Rediscovering the authority of courts to check enforcement discretion

presents an opportunity to rethink much of our modern canon—such as

the false choice between full enforcement of all criminal laws and unfet-

tered discretion, and the unassailability of law enforcement’s case-by-

case discretion. To be sure, this approach imposes costs, but there are

* Assistant Professor of Law, Vanderbilt Law School. © 2025, Farhang Heydari. Senior Advisor,

Policing Project, New York University School of Law. For their insight and feedback, I thank Rebecca Haw

Allensworth, Lisa Schultz Bressman, Barry Friedman, Alissa Marque Heydari, Nicole Langston, Nancy

King, Rob Mikos, Jessica Pishko, Maria Ponomarenko, Matthew Patrick Shaw, Ganesh Sitaraman, Chris

Slobogin, and Kevin Stack. For invaluable research support, I thank Natasha Eskandar, Raghav Gupta, Helen

Griff‌iths, Grace Hayes, and Sophia Howard, as well as Emily Pavuluri of the Vanderbilt Law Library.

Finally, my sincerest gratitude to the Editors of The Georgetown Law Journal, in particular Sara Brizio,

Cecile Duncan, Annie Farrell, Leah Hebron, Maria Lowe, Miriam Taylor, and Yasmeen Rose.

1041

legislative strategies to mitigate these consequences, including limiting

arrestable offenses and the use of pretrial detention. And without limits

on nonenforcement discretion, we risk an unchecked arbitrariness that

poses the greatest risk to the most vulnerable in our society.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1043

I. SHERIFFS AS KINGS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1049

A. THE LONG ARM OF THE SHERIFF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1050

B. THE RECURRENCE OF SHERIFF NONENFORCEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1052

C. THE RISKS OF SHERIFF NULLIFICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1058

1. Democracy Concerns ............................... 1059

2. Liberty Concerns ................................... 1060

3. Arbitrariness Concerns .............................. 1063

II. THE LIMITS OF POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1066

A. ELECTIONS AND DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1066

B. SEPARATION OF POWERS AT THE COUNTY LEVEL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1069

C. FEDERALISM AND DECENTRALIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1072

III. LAW FOR THE LAWMAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1074

A. AMBIGUITY OF THE SHERIFF’S STATUTORY ENFORCEMENT

OBLIGATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1077

B. THE HISTORIC DUTY TO ARREST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1081

C. NONENFORCEMENT AS NEGLECT OF DUTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1084

1. A Duty to Enforce .................................. 1085

2. A Duty to Execute Judicial Orders .................... 1087

3. Beyond Warrant Enforcement ........................ 1088

4. A Duty to Investigate................................ 1088

5. Limits and Potential Defenses ........................ 1090

IV. OBJECTIONS & IMPLICATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1093

A. THE MYTH OF FULL ENFORCEMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1094

1042 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 113:1041

B. THE UNASSAILABILITY OF CASE-BY-CASE DISCRETION . . . . . . . . . . . . 1096

C. MITIGATING THE HARMS OF ENFORCEMENT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1099

D. MODERATING LIABILITY CONCERNS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1102

E. RESTORING LEGISLATIVE SUPREMACY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1103

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1105

INTRODUCTION

On the surface, the off‌ice of the sheriff of Klickitat County, Washington—a rural

county along the Oregon border

1

Charles Bethea, A Coronavirus Turf War in Klickitat County, New Yorker (May 17, 2020), https://

www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/a-coronavirus-turf-war-in-klickitat-county.

—operates like many others across the country.

The state constitution mandates an election for the off‌ice.

2

The sheriff’s department

is the largest policing agency in the county.

3

Compare Klickitat County Sheriff’s Department, POLICE SCORECARD [hereinafter Klickitat Police

Scorecard], https://policescorecard.org/wa/sheriff/klickitat-county [https://perma.cc/2DNT-NV64] (last

visited Mar. 25, 2025), with Goldendale Police Department, POLICE SCORECARD, https://

policescorecard.org/wa/police-department/goldendale [https://perma.cc/7V7H-BEWB] (last visited

Mar. 25, 2025).

Most of the department’s budget is

dedicated to its patrol division.

4

JENNIFER NEIL, CORRECTIONS jJAIL REPORT 8 (2024), https://www.klickitatcounty.org/1543/

Corrections-Jail-Report. The department also has K-9, Marine, and Posse units. Id. at 7–8.

The off‌ice’s arrests primarily are for low-level

offenses.

5

While other county departments have seen their budgets stagnate over the

last few years, the sheriff’s budget has had a number of increases.

6

Although much of this is humdrum, the man occupying the off‌ice is anything

but, at least when it comes to his view of a sheriff’s enforcement authority. Three-

term sheriff of Klickitat County, Bob Songer, is an open adherent to the “constitu-

tional sheriffs” ideology

7

Paul Kiefer, ‘Constitutional Sheriff’ Raises Controversial Posses in Klickitat County, SPOKESMAN-

REV. (Oct. 11, 2024, 10:11 PM), https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2024/oct/11/constitutional-sheriff-

raises-controversial-posses [https://perma.cc/9ZBR-4REZ].

—one that views the sheriff as the highest law enforcement

authority in the county and answerable only to their electorate.

8

Maurice Chammah, Opinion, The Law Enforcement Off‌icers with Surprising Power, N.Y. TIMES

(Oct. 15, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/15/opinion/sheriff-power-trump.html (“The group

argues that sheriffs have more authority within their counties than the state or federal government.”);

Kiefer, supra note 7.

As a consequence,

Sheriff Songer has opposed both federal and state authorities operating in his county

and has declared he will not enforce various state laws—including gun laws,

9

social-distancing mandates,

10

Jacob Bertram, Songer Calls COVID-19 Restrictions ‘Illegal,’ COLUM. GORGE NEWS (Nov. 25,

2020), www.columbiagorgenews.com/free_news/songer-calls-covid-19-restrictions-illegal/article_99ce1f66-

2e8d-11eb-a012-9f52a9a23f3e.html [https://perma.cc/KWA7-FFRG].

and protections for gray wolves.

11

1.

2. WASH. CONST. art. XI, § 5.

3.

4.

5. Klickitat Police Scorecard, supra note 3.

6. See NEIL, supra note 4, at 6–7.

7.

8.

9. Kiefer, supra note 7.

10.

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