Fragile Authority : Federal Justice Before the Justice Department

Daniel Richman traces the roots of the Justice Department, a juggernaut in the eyes of the public but in fact a precarious entity that cannot function without local support. The first history of federal law enforcement before 1870, Fragile Authority shows how the DOJ replicates—for better and for worse—the limitations of its forebears.

The first history of US federal law enforcement from the nation’s founding to the creation of the Justice Department in 1870, showing how federal prosecutions have always been shaped by local institutions and interests. The public imagines the Department of Justice and its agencies as mighty juggernauts. The reality is strikingly different. The FBI is barely larger than the Chicago Police Department, federal courts handle far fewer cases than state courts do, and federal prosecutors rely heavily on state and municipal authorities. The feds cannot function without local support, which means that the projects on which DOJ intervention is most needed—the ones that local communities oppose or don’t care about—are also those least likely to succeed. This is no accident. Fragile Authority shows that this weakness is built into the structure of federal enforcement. To understand why, Daniel Richman traces the present-day workings of the DOJ all the way back to the nation’s founding. The system was so circumscribed at the start that districts went years without a single conviction; enforcement efforts were often just performances of sovereignty for foreign audiences. And while a stronger enforcement apparatus emerged from the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act, its protection of Black civil rights during Reconstruction lasted only a few years before the federal retreat. After its creation in 1870, the Justice Department concealed its limitations by turning the agendas of local police—such as prosecuting gangsters, car thefts, and prostitution—into ostensibly national priorities. For better and for worse, federal law enforcement missions without local buy-in remain rare and difficult to sustain. The resistance to President Trump’s immigration enforcement surge in sanctuary jurisdictions showed yet again that this norm is not easily broken.