Vigilante Nation How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy

For readers of How Democracies Die, two legal scholars expose the history of the GOP’s hidden political strategy to rollback protected rights, from abortion and gun control to surveillance and LGBTQ rights.

Virginia’s governor sets up a tip line for parents to snitch on teachers who acknowledge the reality of racial inequality. Texas unleashes bounty hunters against individuals who aid or abet anyone seeking an abortion. Florida encourages drivers to run over Black Lives Matter protesters who gather peacefully. And everywhere, there is the persistent threat of political violence.

While these episodes might seem to be isolated spasms of MAGA rage, they reflect a concerted legal and political strategy that has been quietly unfolding in courts, think tanks, and state legislatures since the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

With painstaking and enlightening research, Vigilante Nation exposes the insidious network of right-wing lawyers, politicians, funders, and preachers who are deploying vigilantism to cement their hold on power and impose a theocratic version of America. For so long, we have been taught by a bipartisan consensus that vigilantism is incompatible with our rule of law, but our history shows that the right has used it to enforce their vision of true social order. From the Fugitive Slave Act’s use of bounty hunters to Southern militias violently enforcing the terror of Jim Crow, America has long been the home of political vigilantism. Now, discover what the future holds and how crucial it is that we each understand our country’s vigilante laws.

Jon Michaels is a professor of law at UCLA School of Law and is a graduate of Williams College, Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He also attended Yale Law School, where he served as an editor for the Yale Law Journal. Michaels clerked first for Judge Guido Calabresi of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Justice David Souter of the US Supreme Court. A two-time winner of the American Constitution Society’s Cudahy Award for scholarly excellence in administrative law, Michaels is a frequent legal affairs commentator for national and local media outlets. 

David Noll is the associate dean for faculty research and development and a professor of law at Rutgers University. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, the New York Law Journal, and many others. He clerked for Judges Pierre N. Leval and Raymond J. Lohier Jr. on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Judge Richard J. Holwell on the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.