Portside

Michael Steven Smith’s smart and compelling Lawyers for the Left, and you’ll find yourself plunged into the contradictions and swirling through the vortex where that question—what is the law? — is on everyone’s mind all the time.

The county’s lawyer defended this policy by arguing that poor defendants — who are disproportionately black and Latino — stay in jail not because they can’t buy their way out but because they “want” to be there, especially “if it’s a cold week.” Judge Rosenthal called this despicable claim “uncomfortably reminiscent of the historical argument that used to be made that people enjoyed slavery.”