Posse Comitatus

The notion of a posse comitatus has its roots in ancient English Law, growing out of a citizen’s traditional duty to raise a“hue and cry” whenever a serious crime occurred in a village, thus rousing the fellow villagers to assist the sheriff inpursuing the culprit. By the seventeenth century, trained militia bands were expected to perform the duty of assisting thesheriff in such tasks, but all males age fifteen and older still had the duty to serve on the posse comitatus.

In the United States, the posse comitatus was an important institution on the western frontier, where it became known asthe posse. At various times vigilante committees, often acting without legal standing, organized posses to capturewrongdoers. Such posses sharply warned first-time cattle rustlers, for instance, and usually hanged or shot second-timeoffenders. In 1876 a four-hundred-man posse killed one member of the infamous Jesse James gang and captured twoothers.

In 1878 the use of a posse comitatus was limited by the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. This act, passed inresponse to the use of federal troops to enforce reconstruction policies in the southern states, prohibited the use of the U.S.Army to enforce laws unless the Constitution or an act of Congress explicitly authorized such use. This act was amendedfive times in the 1980s, largely to allow for the use of military resources to combat trafficking in illicit narcotics.

Though rarely used, the posse comitatus continues to be a modern legal institution. In June 1977, for example, the Aspen,Colorado, sheriff called out the posse comitatus—ordinary citizens with their own weapons—to hunt for escaped massmurderer Theodore (“Ted”) Bundy. Many states have modern posse comitatus statutes; one typical example is theKentucky statute enacted in 1962 that gives any sheriff the power to “command and take with him the power of the countyor a part thereof, to aid him in the execution of the duties of his office” (Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 70.060 [Baldwin 1996]).

“Posse Comitatus” is also the name taken by a right-wing, antitax extremist group founded in 1969 by Henry L. Beach, aretired dry cleaner and one-time member of the Silver Shirts, a Nazi-inspired organization that was established in the UnitedStates after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. The group operated on the belief that the true intent of the founders ofthe United States was to establish a Christian republic where the individual was sovereign. Members of the group wereunited by the belief that the federal government was illegitimate, being operated by Jewish interests through the Internal Revenue Service, the federal courts, and the federal reserve. The Posse Comitatus received widespread media attention in1983 when a leader of the group, Gordon Kahl, was involved in a violent standoff with North Dakota law enforcementofficers. Convicted for failure to pay taxes and then for violating the terms of his Probation, Kahl shot and killed threeofficers and wounded three others before being shot and killed himself.

Further readings

Corcoran, James. 1990. Bitter Harvest. New York: Viking.

Hasday, Jill Elaine. 1996. “Civil War as Paradigm: Reestablishing the Rule of Law at the End of the Cold War.” KansasJournal of Law and Public Policy 5.

Malcolm, Joyce Lee. 1994. To Keep and Bear Arms. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.

posse comitatus

(pahs-see coh-mitt-tah-tus) n. from Latin for “possible force,” the power of the sheriff to call upon any able-bodied adult men(and presumably women) in the county to assist him in apprehending a criminal. The assembled group is called a posse forshort.

posse comitatus

‘the power of the county’. The sheriff was able to call together able-bodied men to keep thepeace. The institution transplanted to the USA, thence into ordinary parlance: ‘round up a posse’.