Thread by @equalityAlec

THREAD. A brief story about California judges openly refusing to comply with the law tells you a lot of what you need to know about "the rule of law" in the United States.

Over the last few years, there have been three (3) major court rulings--two federal courts and a state court--finding the cash bail practices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento unconstitutional. A fourth case, from California Supreme Court, upheld the same principles.

The court cases all said something simple: it's unconstitutional to jail people away from their families after arrest solely because their families cannot access a cash payment for money bail. (Only U.S. and Philippines have for-profit bail industry.)

So, what happened? The judges in the other 55 of California's 58 counties have simply refused to comply with these rulings. I've never seen anything like it in my career.

In those 55 counties, the court have recently decided to simply keep doing what has been held unconstitutional. They have kept their cash bail schedules--essentially menus that assign certain amounts of cash based on what a person is charged with any nothing else.

By the way, every major scientific study on the issue has found that cash bail harms public safety, and reducing the use of cash bail makes us all safer. prospect.org/justice/2024-0…

And in all counties, including in Los Angeles, many judges are in open and flagrant defiance of the binding court ruling from the Supreme Court. A number of prominent community groups and lawyers have submitted some ethics complaints about the judges refusing to follow the law.

Many judges are now in deliberations about whether they'll continue their standoff with the law + refuse to comply. Ethics officials are considering what to do with judges who refuse to follow law. Technically, they're committing federal crimes under 18 USC 242. It's fascinating.

So far, federal prosecutors and state civil rights officials have stayed out of it, as has the powerful Judicial Council in California. What California's legal establishment decides will go a long way toward the future integrity of our legal system amidst rising authoritarianism.

This is one of the best examples of the everyday, normalized breakdown of "the rule of law" that I discussed in Usual Cruelty--available for free here. Powerful people in our society only enforce some laws against some people. yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…

This article does a good job discussing the scandal unfolding in San Mateo uncovered by @svdebug mercurynews.com/2024/08/26/civ…

To put this in context, based on prevailing estimates of 210 shopliftings per 100,000 people and data on the number of people who receive illegal cash bail orders, judges commit far more cash bail violations in CA every year than total shopliftings.

One of the lessons of the article I linked to above (which is first essay in my book Usual Cruelty, always available for free to teachers, students, and anyone in prison) is: it's completely unappreciated the sheer number of crimes and law-breaking that elites perpetrate.