How State-Sponsored Vigilantism Threatens Our Communities (and our Democracy)

Across vast swaths of the United States, “legal vigilantism” is transforming how Americans work, have fun, study, love, and participate in the civic and political life of their communities and their country. Relying on PTA moms, soccer dads, abortion snitches, and heavily armed white nationalist militiamen, MAGA officials at the state and local levels are deputizing citizen culture warriors to intimidate, harass, and punish women, racial and religious minorities, and LGBTQ+ people who make dignity and equality demands that threaten white Christian political and cultural power.

This webinar features Professors Jon Michaels and Lindsay Wiley, along with Shane Ball LAW ’26, to discuss Jon’s new book Vigilante Nation and explore what the resurgence in state-sponsored vigilantism means for our communities—and our democracy.  

65 min
October 8, 2024

Additional Materials

Jon D. Michaels & David L. Noll, Vigilante Federalism, 108 Cornell L. Rev. 1187 (2003)

Jon D. Michaels, If the Supreme Court Lets Other States Copy Texas’s Abortion Law, It’ll Be Chaos, Washington Post (2022)

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