Course: Constitutional Sheriff™
a Self-Directed Course
Teachers
- Dar Leaf, Sheriff, Barry County, Michigan
- Brent Allan Winters, Attorney at Law
Course Description
Your Sheriff is at the foundational of our common-law tradition of freedom.
This course has three parts:
- History of the American Sheriff: Where does the Sheriff's office arise from?
- Present-day duties of the American Sheriff: What are real-life examples of how the Sheriff operates?
- Future of the American Sheriff's office: How do you help your Sheriff keep the peace?
First, this course unpacks how the Anglo-Saxon office called Sheriff laid the foundation for the American Sheriff’s role as a constitutional (law of the land) officer by the people’s direct choosing; and why he has independent discretion in carrying out his duties. Police chiefs are bureaucrats, appointed to their place within the chain of command of a city government; and as such, have diminished discretion; the Sheriff, by contrast, is autonomous from the longer and attenuated chains of delegated and re-delegated bureaucratic power, and as such, wields great discretion within the scope of his office, distinguishing him for a police officer.
Second, this course unfolds the law and history of the Posse, from King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon times to the present. At bottom, our posse-comitatus law of the twenty-first-century United States is the same as that of ninth-century England. The Sheriff, in carrying out his peacekeeping duties, can summon to his aid any one or more able-bodied adult male of his county. His discretion about whom to summon, when to summon, and how he summons men is within the scope of his office's jurisdiction.
Third, this course lays bare the relationship between the Posse and the Fourth Militia Clause called the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment fosters a well-regulated militia, and, in furtherance of this purpose, it is the Sheriff's duty to safeguard the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The Posse is not the State's militia, but is the county’s subset of its State militia. As such, the county Posse and the State militia are not identical, but they overlap and are inextricably intertwined so that the disarmament of one would destroy the other.
Fourth, this course draws clear our U.S. Constitution's narrow and limited scope of federal jurisdiction, highlighting the Sheriff's broad police-powers jurisdiction and discretion, within his county. (See Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997)).
Fifth, this course reminds us that the county Sheriff—not the county State's Attorney or the State's Attorney General—is the top law-enforcement officer in his county.
Throughout the course we unfurl real-case instances of the Posse Comitatus in modern times. The Posses assists Sheriffs during county fairs, weather emergencies, and hostage situations, among many other duties unknown until the specific need to keep the peace in a specific instance arises.
The prerecorded course is presented in 12 sessions.
The course includes assignments delivered to registered participants by email.
Those who complete the course will receive a Certificate of Completion.
In appreciation of a suggested donation of $175 (or more).
Course Background
Sheriff's Posse: What is It?
While rioters were destroying our cities in the late 1960s, the case Baltimore v. Silver, 263 Md. 439 (1971) found its way to the Maryland Supreme Court. Baltimore business owners had sued the City of Baltimore for damages because the City failed to suppress rioting. Baltimore said that it was not responsible for damages because of the nature of the destruction. The Maryland Supreme Court, however, disagreed, holding that the City was responsible for damages because it failed to use the power of the posse (short for posse comitatus, a Latin phrase meaning “the power of the county”) to suppress the rioters: [A]ny official responsible to conserve the peace, said the Court, must raise the posse, if necessary, in order to suppress rioting.
At common law throughout our States, the Sheriff has the power and duty to make the hue and cry to the Posse to ferret out and suppress criminal activity. The Sheriff, according to the need and at his discretion, may command to his aid, each and any able-bodied man. Centuries of history’s record has established this common-law power of the Sheriff to raise the Posse.
County Posse -vs- State Militia
Though members of the Posse are also members of the Militia, the two have different purposes. The Posse derives its power from the county (its able-bodied men), at the summons and command of their Sheriff; the Posse’s purpose is foremost to keep the county’s peace. The Militia, by contrast, derives its power from the State (its able-bodied men) at the summons and command of its Governor or the President of the United States; the Militia’s purpose, when the State Governor summons, is to keep the peace; the Militia’s purpose when the President summons, is to suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions. (U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls.15–16).
Bottom line, the Posse is under local county Sheriff's control; the Militiaman, however, is under command of either the State governor or the U.S. President. Whoever of these three men—County Sheriff, State Governor, U.S. President—is the first to summon a militiaman, has him under his authority. Both the county posse and the State militia are both constitutional and indispensable to our U.S. Constitutiion, but the county posse, being more local, is more foundational. Nowadays some news media outlets falsely claim that Constitutional Sheriffs are seeking alliances with anti-government extremists. Such false accusations are themselves anti-government, meant to undermine local government by undermining the Sheriff’s lawful power of the county, called the posse. We know of no constitutional Sheriffs seeking alliances with anti-government extremists. In fact, not only are our posses and militias lawful, but also, our U.S. Constitution requires them. Hence, the county posse and State militia have more lawful character than the government agents seeking to arrest militiamen for fulfilling their duty to keep (safeguard) and bear (carry) arms (guns) under the law of the land called our U.S. Constitution. Agencies are creatures of legislatures; the posse and militia the people that formed our State and national governments.
To sum up, if rioting threatens any of our lives, liberties, or property (or some combination thereof); or if a State governor, State attorney general, or other office holder calls rioting a mere ideology or freedom of expression instead of a serious threat, denounce such anti-government evil, and support our law’s requirement of local government, called the Sheriff’s power of the county, called the posse.
—Sheriff Dar Leaf & Attorney Brent Allan Winters