Attorney General Jeff Sessions drew howls of protest on Monday after calling sheriffs a ‘critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement.’
The term ‘Anglo-American’ refers to England’s tradition of common law that was adopted by its New World colonies and later absorbed into the laws of the United States.
But Democratic members of Congress and liberal activists saw it as a ‘dog-whistle’ indication of racism, interpreting ‘Anglo’ as a code word for ‘white,’ not ‘British.’
Sessions spoke at the winter meeting of the National Sheriffs Association.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions angered Democrats and civil rights activists when he told the National Sheriffs Association on Monday that they were part of the ‘Anglo-American’ tradition
A Hawaii Democratic senator tweeted that the term was a ‘dog whistle’ intended to ‘pit Americans against each other’
Democratic Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii tweeted his outrage, writing: ‘Do you know anyone who says “Anglo-American heritage” in a sentence? What could possibly be the purpose of saying that other than to pit Americans against each other?’
‘For the chief law enforcement officer to use a dog whistle like that is appalling,’ Schatz wrote.
The American Civil Liberties Union piled on, tweeting: ‘Yes, our Attorney General just said this. Out loud.’
And Democratic Coalition co-founder Scott Dworkin rendered a brief verdict.
‘Jeff Sessions is a bigot,’ Dworkin wrote on Twitter.
The term ‘Anglo-American’ is uncommon in government, but not unused.
In 2006 Barack Obama, when he was a U.S. senator from Illinois, delivered a floor speech against the government’s right to detain suspected terrorists without charging them with crimes.
‘The world is watching what we do today in America,’ Obama intoned as he defended legal writs of Habeas Corpus. ‘They will know what we do here today, and they will treat all of us accordingly in the future – our soldiers, our diplomats, our journalists, anybody who travels beyond these borders.’
‘I hope we remember this as we go forward. I sincerely hope we can protect what has been called the “great writ” – a writ that has been in place in the Anglo-American legal system for over 700 years.’
Obama’s use of the term more than a decade ago didn’t stop the NAACP, a black civil rights group, from condemning Sessions for what it called ‘racially-tinged comments.’
‘His decision to link the term Sheriff to some part “of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement” is an unfortunate yet consistent aspect of the language coming out of the Department of Justice under his tenure and in the opinion of the NAACP, qualifies as the latest example of dog whistle politics,” the group claimed in a statement.
The term ‘sheriff’ was derived by combining ‘shire’ and ‘reeve’ into a combined word that means ‘county guardian.’
Barack Obama, pictured as a U.S. senator in 2006, defended the tradition of the writ of Habeas Corpus in a speech, calling it part of the ‘Anglo-American ‘heritage’
U.S. sheriffs, too, preside over law enforcement at the county, not the city or state, level.
The Justice Department told reporters on Monday that ‘most law students learn in the first week of their first year’ that ‘Anglo-American law – also known as the common law – is a shared legal heritage between England and America.’
Sheriffs are unique remnants of that older legal system, DOJ spokesperson Ian Prior said.
‘Before reporters sloppily imply nefarious meaning behind the term, we would suggest that they read any number of the Supreme Court opinions that use the term. Or they could simply put “Anglo-American law” into Google.’
Sessions’ written remarks, as prepared for delivery, did not include the term ‘Anglo-American.’
Instead, the attorney general was to say that sheriffs are ‘a critical part of our legal heritage.’