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BOOK REVIEW FEBRUARY 16, 2023

If John Rawls Ran the Police

rachel lu

Get ready for a new kind of social justice warrior.

A merica ha s a problem with p olice legitim acy. this

has been true for some years, but the past month has
underscored the point. Understandably, the savage beating of
T yre Nichols has led to renewed calls for police reform, and clearly many
people do need to be held accountable for that shocking incident. “Police
reform” can mean many things, however. Does it merely imply that
officers should be more carefully trained, and then held to account when
they make serious mistakes? Does it mean that they should be fewer in
number, or does it imply a radical transformation in the way Americans
think about policing?

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In the background of this conversation stands an unhappy truth: violent

crime is rising in America, especially in neighborhoods that have long had
fraught relations with the police. Police officers have been quitting their
jobs in large numbers as cities scramble desperately to recruit more.
Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether to pile the most
blame on activists, criminals, politicians, or the police themselves, one
thing at least is abundantly clear: American law enforcement needs a
rebrand. Somehow the public must be persuaded to trust the police again. 

Brandon del Pozo, once a police chief and now a professor at Brown
University, has some ideas on this front. His book, The Police and the
State, grew out of a doctoral dissertation that recommends a dramatic
reworking of America’s entire philosophy of policing, building on the
political theory of John Rawls. The idea sounds eccentric at first. As the
argument unfolds, there is actually a certain obviousness to it, as though
this was a book that simply had to be written. Del Pozo supplies a sober,
good-faith analysis of what would need to be done to make policing
palatable to social justice activists. Do we want woke policing? If we do, it
will probably look like this.

Just Retribution and the Need for Order

Policing has long been a source of tension in America. Policing incidents

have been the main catalyst for city riots for the past 75 years or more;
this is not a unique legacy of Black Lives Matter. Despite that, there is also
a long tradition of holding the police in high esteem, as we see from the
popularity of police procedurals, and the political traction Republicans
once won through their Tough on Crime agenda. 

Americans are still suspicious of state coercion, however. The feeling is

particularly intense when state interference is invasive, reaching into our
daily lives. As the coercive arm of the state, the police constantly excite
this suspicion. Of course, policemen don’t just put people in handcuffs;
they do many other helpful things too. But they are distinguished as
police precisely by their special mandate to control fellow citizens, even
potentially with physical force. There is a reason why the phrase “police
state” does not in our minds imply that a society is extremely just. 

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If the state does not assume responsibility for

just retribution, citizens will do it themselves,
often triggering horrific cycles of violence. We
allow the police to interfere in our lives
because, unpleasant as this may sometimes
be, family feuds and lynch mobs are worse.

No one supposes that police power is limitless. We are not obliged to obey
all police orders under all circumstances. I myself once declined to follow
orders when a uniformed officer instructed me to leave a collegiate
football game, on the grounds that other fans were concerned that my
baby (strapped to my chest) was underdressed. My refusal was very
cordial, and the policewoman looked quite awkward as she stood next to
me for another full minute, perhaps hoping that I would change my mind.
I felt no remorse, however. That was not a justified use of police power.

The police are properly empowered to coerce others when this is

necessary to enforce law, and preserve order. It is fitting for the state
specifically to assume this responsibility, to ensure that all citizens are
protected, but also because it is important to prevent private citizens from
taking retribution into their own hands. This is the central point of
Aeschylus’ Oresteia. If the state does not assume responsibility for just
retribution, citizens will do it themselves, often triggering horrific cycles
of violence. We allow the police to interfere in our lives because,
unpleasant as this may sometimes be, family feuds and lynch mobs are
worse. Policing is a vital and honorable job, when officers have the
necessary discipline and courage, as well as proper respect for both the
law and the people they serve. Good policing preserves the order that
enables us to enjoy real liberty.

Social Justice Warriors

Del Pozo is not satisfied with the ancient insights of Aeschylus. He wants
to build a new case for police legitimacy, on a liberal-democratic Rawlsian
foundation. He wants law enforcement to embrace a Rawlsian theory of

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justice, accepting that it is their task to respect the equal liberty of all
citizens while making a special effort to cater to the least advantaged. For
the police, as for government more broadly, distributive justice (or what
might in popular discourse be called “social justice”) should be the
primary goal. 

It’s an obvious step to take, given progressive concerns. If we really are

dead-set and determined to ensure that the police never perpetrate social
injustice, why not just make social justice their job? Extending Rawls’
social-justice-based political theory to policing is, at least on a conceptual
level, a fairly elegant way to prevent the shadows of historical sins from
pushing their way into the present.

It doesn’t follow, of course, that this is something any reasonable person

would actually want, even if it were possible to bring American police
departments on board. Moving through the different case studies and
examples that del Pozo explores, it becomes clear that his recommended
form of policing would be both expansive in scope, and potentially
invasive in application. He’s very comfortable allowing officers to order
citizens around in all sorts of contexts and for reasons that may have only
the vaguest relationship to any existing statute. This is exactly what one
would expect of police who are guided more by a vague but high-minded
mission than by any particular commitment to the law. 

To give shape to his theory, del Pozo enumerates three major “powers”
that should be afforded to the police. First, they may protect and rescue
citizens from danger. Second, they may act as agents of the courts in
gathering information and making arrests. Finally, they may “broker and
enforce social cooperation.” 

These first two powers do seem to align with a more traditional

justification of policing, centered around law and order. However, del Pozo
recasts these traditional functions, putting them in alignment with his
broader social-justice-based view. Readers are urged to see the police as
“distributing practical justice,” even when they are arresting murderers or
preventing street crime. If I am being mugged and a cop intervenes, I
might think that he is fulfilling his duty by preventing injustice and

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preserving order. In del Pozo’s view, that’s not the best way to see it. The
officer is “distributing practical justice,” giving me an appropriate share of
a common state resource.

What is “practical justice”? It’s a vague term, but in application seems

effectively synonymous with “safety,” broadly understood. Del Pozo
eagerly explains how officers do, in many circumstances, protect people
from threats that have nothing to do with lawbreaking. They help find
lost children and rescue drowning swimmers. They talk suicidal people
down from ledges. This is of course true, and admirable, but in context,
the object of stressing these contributions is to move concerns about order
and retribution further to the periphery of policing, so that they can be
subsumed under a vague “practical justice” which can then be distributed
as a form of “social justice,” del Pozo’s all-encompassing good. 

The contours of this project become even clearer when we reach del Pozo’s
third power, “brokering and enforcing social cooperation.” Here, he is
especially interested in the role police can play in ensuring the full
inclusion of disadvantaged groups, especially when they patrol public
spaces. There are interesting points of overlap here with the “broken
windows policing” of James Q . Wilson, which was widely decried by the
left as excessively invasive (or simply racist). Wilson wanted the police to
be attentive to the low-level crimes that make a public space feel lawless,
thus encouraging more brazen forms of criminality. Del Pozo is also quite
interested in policing of public spaces, but for him, order is not the first
priority; instead, the police are tasked with protecting social equality, with
priority given to the interests of the underprivileged. 

Del Pozo’s police are effectively parents,

trying to raise benighted Americans into good
Rawlsians. If we allow them to curb our ugly
prejudices and agree to share spaces like nice
boys and girls, we’ll be allowed our fun
activities.

To some of us, coercive social engineering may sound like a nightmare. Do

we trust the police to make these kinds of judgment calls? Aren’t vague

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procedures and high-minded social goals exactly the sort of thing that
might be used to justify any number of politically-motivated abuses of
police power? Del Pozo doesn’t seem overly concerned. Indeed, he makes
it clear that he prefers for everyday public-use questions to be settled by
the police, not by the more mediated mechanisms of organic community
leadership and soft social norms. That’s because del Pozo’s police can be
trained in social-democratic principles, in a way that may enable them to
correct many of the evil effects of social prejudice or asserted privilege.
Del Pozo wants to see cops in parks and on street corners, adjudicating
disputes over picnic tables and noise levels. As the state’s ground-level
coercers, they are uniquely positioned to bring social justice to the nation
at large.

In one particularly revealing chapter, del Pozo walks readers through a list
of real-world cases in which he personally tried to apply these principles
in his job as Burlington police chief. We hear how he permitted unlawful
behavior from social justice activists, merely issuing a statement politely
asking them not to break laws too often. He “gladly,” as police chief,
allowed Burlington to declare itself a sanctuary city, arguing that illegal
immigrants are fully entitled to the protection of the state, just like green
card holders or tourists. This is simply incoherent. Del Pozo’s entire
argument is based on social contract theory, which must clearly draw a
distinction between citizens, lawful non-citizens, and people whose very
presence here constitutes a violation of our law.

The later chapters of The Police and the State argue energetically for the
relevance of Rawlsian principles to policing. This portion of the book does
really feel like a dissertation. Del Pozo draws distinctions between himself
and other Rawlsian thinkers or police reform advocates. These subtleties
probably won’t hold much interest for conservative thinkers, who will
already have grasped most of what they need to know. 

A Free People

There is a strange kind of innocence to del Pozo, which is quite surprising

in a cop with nearly three decades’ worth of experience. He must have
seen a tremendous amount of ugliness across those years, but his chosen

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examples of police work are often whimsical and zany to the point of
absurdity. In one chapter, he illustrates the value of his social-
cooperation-police by describing a thousand-person pillow fight that he
once helped to facilitate in Central Park. Events like that, he warns, will
not be possible unless police can be trusted to serve as mediators,
preventing fights from becoming seriously violent and “ordering people
to pick up their own feathers.” I was flabbergasted. Do we want thousand-
person pillow fights in the public square? If that’s the supposed payoff for
accepting del Pozo’s social justice police, I’ll take a hard pass.

The pillow-fight example is helpful, though, for showing how del Pozo’s
police are effectively parents, trying to raise benighted Americans into
good Rawlsians. If we allow them to curb our ugly prejudices and agree to
share spaces like nice boys and girls, we’ll be allowed our fun activities.
Another chapter of the book mentions how del Pozo, as police chief,
distributed free ice cream as a public-relations move. That made me laugh
out loud, because the front cover of the book shows an officer standing
watchfully over a crowded square where people are mingling with ice-
cream cones. The officer is in sharp focus; the people are in bokeh. I
wondered whether they got their ice cream from the cop.

Pillow fights and ice cream cones are not the key to police reform. Neither
is John Rawls. What we need is exactly the opposite of what del Pozo
recommends. Americans need to understand that the police cannot be
held responsible for creating a socially just order. Good policing often
draws out painful or unpalatable truths about our social order. Most
criminals are both sinned-against and sinning, and effective law
enforcement thus reminds us of the far-reaching consequences of
historical injustice. It can be healthy, sometimes, for citizens to wrestle
collectively with those unhappy truths, but it is not healthy to pile those
burdens on the backs of the police. To do their jobs, they need to be
empowered to stop criminals, without worrying about corporate guilt or
level playing fields. They need to be the thin blue line.

In the modern world, people cannot hope to live freely without a police
force. Americans have lost sight of some basic truths about law and order,
and, by extension, policing. Some are surely prepared to listen to an
advocate like del Pozo. Let’s hope they don’t.

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REVIEWED

The Police and the State

by Brandon del Pozo

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Rachel Lu is an Associate Editor at Law & Liberty and a Contributing

Writer at America Magazine. After studying moral philosophy at Cornell,
she taught for several years before retiring to focus on the moral
formation of her own five sons. She writes on politics, culture, religion,
and parenting.

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought
and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together
serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational
material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law &
Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal
philosophy, and pedagogy.

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