It has been unseasonably warm at my summer home in Martha’s Vineyard this year, the kind of stifling, oppressive humidity that makes the short walk from the veranda to the wine cellar feel like a genuinely athletic endeavor. Sweating, I have recently come to realize, is a great equalizer. It is a shared human experience that connects the highest echelons of coastal media with the lowest rungs of society.
It was in this spirit of deep, perspiring empathy that I read the recent news out of Louisiana. A federal judge recently examined the conditions at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, widely known as Angola. He looked closely at the practice of forcing incarcerated men to work in the agricultural fields, picking crops by hand in brutal, life-threatening, triple-digit heat. He reviewed the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. And, with a heavy heart and a clear mind, he officially declared the conditions completely unconstitutional.
But then, in a stroke of absolute jurisprudential brilliance, he did absolutely nothing about it.
Thanks to a recent ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the judge determined that his hands were procedurally tied. The appellate court had already established a framework that essentially stripped him of the power to intervene in the prison’s day-to-day operations. And so, having meticulously documented a gross violation of fundamental human rights, the judge simply allowed the unconstitutional forced labor to continue unabated.
I know the bleeding hearts and the activist class are up in arms about this. They are using inflammatory, emotional rhetoric like “slave labor” and “lethal abuse.” But we must pause, take a breath of air-conditioned air, and applaud the Fifth Circuit for protecting us from the terrifying specter of judicial overreach.
It is time we finally admitted that stopping an ongoing, systemic constitutional violation would simply be too much paperwork for everyone involved.
Think about the dangerous precedent it would set if federal courts actually had to fix the unconstitutional things they found. It would be absolute chaos. A judge would identify an atrocity, and then, rather than simply issuing a sternly worded PDF and going out for a nice steak dinner, they would be forced to oversee a complex remedy. They would have to issue injunctions. They would have to monitor compliance. They might even have to compel the state of Louisiana to purchase mechanized farming equipment or, God forbid, pay a living wage to free citizens to harvest the okra.
We cannot allow the pristine, abstract beauty of federal jurisprudence to be muddied by the logistical nightmare of keeping marginalized people alive.
Let us also examine the macroeconomic reality of the situation, a perspective that the radical left continually refuses to entertain. Angola is an 18,000-acre prison farm. It operates on the grounds of a former antebellum slave plantation. For over a century, the economic model of that specific plot of land has relied entirely on captive human beings being forced to extract agricultural value from the soil under threat of violence.
Why should we disrupt a century of economic continuity just because the Bill of Rights technically frowns upon it? Tradition is the bedrock of our society. If the state of Louisiana cannot force captive men to do backbreaking labor for literal pennies in 105-degree heat under the threat of solitary confinement, who will? I certainly won't. I have a column to write. Will you?
I was dining with a prominent conservative appellate scholar at the Yale Club last Tuesday, and we discussed this exact conundrum over a delightful, ethically sourced sea bass. He explained the nuance of the Fifth Circuit's philosophy with a clarity that I found deeply moving.
The Constitution, he explained, is not a set of instructions. It is merely an observational tool. It is like a thermometer, rather than a thermostat. It can tell you that the conditions at Angola are unconstitutionally hot, but it does not give you the remote control to turn on the air conditioning.
This is the brilliance of the modern conservative legal framework. We get to maintain our moral superiority by officially declaring the conditions “cruel and unusual,” proving that our system of checks and balances is awake and aware. But we also maintain our agricultural output by ensuring the courts are entirely powerless to stop the cruelty. It is the ultimate win-win scenario for everyone except the people currently collapsing in the fields, and frankly, they are not the target demographic for complex constitutional theory anyway.
The true measure of a civilized legal system is its ability to meticulously document a profound moral atrocity, publish it in the federal register, and then calmly file it in a cabinet forever.
I feel a profound sense of sympathy for the federal judge in this case. Imagine the immense emotional labor of writing a 40-page opinion detailing how human beings are being subjected to torturous, life-threatening conditions, knowing full well you are going to conclude the document with a jurisprudential shrug.
It takes immense courage to look at a man dying of heatstroke and say, “I see you, I validate your unconstitutional suffering, and I am going to let it continue out of respect for the appellate docket.” That is the kind of stoicism that built this nation.
Critics of the prison farm system simply do not understand the concept of constitutional flexibility. They believe that if something violates the foundational document of the United States, it must be illegal. But that is a childlike view of the law. In the adult world, “unconstitutional” is merely a strong suggestion. It is a one-star Yelp review from the judicial branch. It does not mean the restaurant has to close down, especially if the state is relying on the free appetizers.
Furthermore, we must consider the unbearable administrative burden that would be placed on the wardens of Angola if the court had intervened. Imagine the logistical nightmare of having to provide adequate shade. Think of the complex supply chain required to distribute cold drinking water to men working in a field. Think of the sheer mental bandwidth required to view incarcerated individuals as human beings deserving of bodily safety. We cannot ask our public servants to take on that kind of workload.
We are standing on a slippery slope. If we allow activist judges to halt unconstitutional forced labor today, what will they demand tomorrow? Will they demand that the workers be paid minimum wage? Will they demand that the prison provide sunscreen? Will they demand that the state of Louisiana figure out how to balance its budget without relying on a captive, unpaid workforce?
Before you know it, the entire edifice of American punitive infrastructure will crumble, simply because we decided to care about the Eighth Amendment. We must hold the line.
I would like to speak directly to the incarcerated workers currently picking crops in the blazing Louisiana sun. I know the heat is unbearable. I know the threat of solitary confinement is terrifying. I know the lack of water is inhumane. But I ask you to look at the bigger picture.
You are not just harvesting vegetables. You are participating in a landmark exercise of judicial non-interference. You are the vanguard of a legal theory that prioritizes the abstract boundaries of appellate power over the physical reality of human suffering.
As you wipe the sweat from your brow, I hope you feel a deep sense of patriotic pride. Your unconstitutional labor is upholding the vital, sacred traditions of the Fifth Circuit. And for that, from the bottom of my heart, and from the comfort of my air-conditioned study, I thank you.