United States Constitution

The United States Constitution appears in the book not simply as a founding legal document but as a contested source of authority. Dan Lafferty reads it alongside religious scripture as an immutable guide to life; Mormon leaders use constitutional arguments to defend the autonomy of their communities and the practice of plural marriage; and fundamentalists invoke religious liberty even as church authorities impose rules over family and daily conduct. Across these settings, the Constitution becomes part of a struggle over who may make law, how it should be interpreted, and whose authority prevails when legal orders collide.

A Sacred Text in Dan Lafferty’s Legal World

Dan Lafferty’s constitutional convictions developed out of conflict with government regulation. While training as a chiropractor in California, he supported his family by selling vegetarian sandwiches made at home. The business was shut down by the Board of Health, which said he needed a license and had not paid the required taxes. The loss of that income, shortly after Matilda had given birth, became a turning point: he concluded that government intervention was unjust and began to see political questions as inseparable from religious ones.

Back in Utah, Lafferty’s reading joined the United States Constitution to the Book of Mormon, The Peace Maker, and the Declaration of Independence. He regarded these texts as holy writings whose divinely inspired language offered a direct connection to God. Their authority, in his understanding, was absolute; righteous people had a duty to follow their words literally. This approach left little room for context, ambiguity, or the possibility that a legal rule might be interpreted differently according to circumstance.

That outlook shaped his actions. After praying for guidance, Lafferty returned his driver’s license, marriage license, and Social Security card to the authorities. He rejected posted speed limits and stopped paying taxes, including sales tax on purchases. In discussions with his brothers, he argued that the government had no right to require licenses, taxes, or Social Security numbers. A license, he reasoned, amounted to an agreement to let the government control a person’s life. His appeal to constitutional liberty thus became a personal refusal to recognize ordinary regulatory authority.

In the summer of 1982, Lafferty carried that argument into electoral politics, running for sheriff of Utah County. He spoke at public forums, wrote to the Provo newspaper, gave radio interviews, and rode in small-town parades. He said his purpose was to restore the primacy of common-law juries and the fundamentals of the Constitution, and promised to enforce laws according to a scrupulously literal reading of the document.

Constitutional Argument and the Freeway Arrest

On October 4, 1982, after meeting with the American Fork police chief to discuss a possible public debate, Lafferty was stopped on Interstate 15 for speeding and lacking a vehicle inspection sticker. He believed the stop was connected to his criticism of government power and his recent newspaper article about arrest warrants. When the trooper said he had read the article, Lafferty insisted that an arrest required a warrant from a judge and that the officer should bring it to his home.

Lafferty had locked the car doors and left the driver’s window open only about an inch, believing the narrow gap would allow conversation but prevent the officer from reaching inside. The trooper pulled the window out of its tracks and tried to grab him. Lafferty drove away, but the state troopers pursued and apprehended him shortly afterward. He faced five charges, including felony escape, assault by a prisoner, and evading an officer.

At his justice-court trial, Lafferty represented himself and tried to base his defense on constitutional law. The judge repeatedly told him that Utah justice courts could not hear constitutional matters. The judge also overruled his objection to the four-woman jury; Lafferty argued that the jury should include at least one man. The episode shows the distance between his constitutional theory and the jurisdiction the court recognized: he treated the Constitution as a direct authority capable of invalidating the government’s actions, while the judge held that this particular court could not decide the constitutional issues he raised.

Nauvoo and Competing Legal Sovereignties

The book sets Lafferty’s individual legal campaign against an earlier, institutional assertion of Mormon power. Nauvoo’s charter, passed by the Illinois General Assembly in December 1840, granted the city unusual sovereign rights. The book describes the result as a theocratic principality headed by Joseph Smith, who was officially anointed King, Priest, and Ruler over Israel on Earth. He commanded the Nauvoo Legion, a large and disciplined militia, and sought congressional authorization for a much larger force under his personal control.

This arrangement illustrates how legal authority could be used not only to limit power but also to consolidate it. Illinois’s charter created the legal basis for a city with exceptional autonomy, while Smith’s religious and military authority gave that autonomy a distinctly theocratic character. The Constitution is not presented as the direct instrument behind every aspect of Nauvoo’s rule; rather, the account places the charter, the city’s powers, and Smith’s ambitions within a larger national contest over the limits of local sovereignty.

A related conflict unfolded in Utah under Brigham Young. Young argued that plural marriage was a religious practice protected by the First Amendment and that the country had no right to interfere with the Saints’ marital customs. The principle underlying this defense was that God’s law took precedence over human law, especially laws made by non-Mormons. In Deseret, Mormon leaders organized a legal system intended to ensure that religious law would prevail when it conflicted with civil law.

Because Utah remained a territory, legal authority was supposed to reside in federal courts. The Utah Territorial Legislature, dominated by Mormons, expanded the power of local probate courts controlled by Young. Most probate judges were Mormon bishops, and juries were composed almost entirely of Mormons who followed instructions from church leaders. Federal officials complained that Young had transformed the territory into a theocratic dictatorship; many left after facing sustained harassment. In this account, constitutional and territorial arrangements did not settle the conflict over jurisdiction. They became terrain on which federal power, local institutions, and church authority competed.

Religious Liberty, Church Authority, and the Limits of the Claim

Later fundamentalists likewise present their domestic lives as protected by constitutional belief. As news coverage brought polygamous communities into public view, they insisted that they were seeking to live according to deeply held convictions and that the government had no right to intrude into their homes. Their claim faced a direct legal obstacle: polygamy was a crime in every U.S. state and in Canada, and police officers were sworn to uphold the law. Religious liberty was therefore invoked within, not outside, a conflict over the law’s reach and enforcement.

The book also places these claims beside the internal authority exercised by leaders in Colorado City. Residents were forbidden to watch television or read newspapers, and were barred from contact with people outside the United Effort Plan, including relatives who had left the faith. After DeLoy Bateman stopped attending priesthood meetings, the leader dispatched someone to take his wives and children, treating them as property of the priesthood that could be reassigned. These rules show that appeals to religious autonomy could coexist with restrictions on information, association, and family life. The community’s claim that government should keep out of the home did not mean that individuals within the community were free from coercive authority.

The book’s treatment of the United States Constitution thus turns on a persistent tension. Lafferty invokes it against licensing, taxation, and arrest; nineteenth-century Mormon leaders use constitutional and territorial arrangements to defend local religious rule; and fundamentalists appeal to religious liberty while their own leaders enforce demanding communal rules. The document supplies no uncontested answer to these conflicts in the narrative. Its language becomes a resource claimed by opposing authorities, and the practical question is which institution—the state, the church, or the individual—gets to determine what that language permits.