What does “cashless bail” really mean, and why is the federal government suddenly taking notice. From Rikers Island to reform efforts in New Jersey and New York, pretrial detention affects more lives than most people realize, often punishing individuals before trial. In this episode, Dr. Kellen Funk explains why bail is not just a legal technicality — it’s a societal issue that shapes justice, equity, and everyday life.
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About My 201st Guest Scholar:
Dr. Kellen Funk is a professor of law at Columbia Law School and a legal historian who studies civil procedure, remedies, and the development of the American bail system - among other subjects
He’s the author of "Law’s Machinery: Reforming the Craft of Lawyering in America’s Industrial Age", published in 2024, and he’s currently working on a new book titled "American Bail: A History of Wealth and Pretrial Detention in the United States".
Dr. Funk’s scholarship combines historical research methods with data science, including an original text analysis project mapping case law citations across all legal literature in the 19th-century United States.
His co-authored study of the transmission of legal codes in Reconstruction America, published in the 2018 American Historical Review, has become a foundational work in the field of digital legal history. He also leads a digital project called Bail at the Founding—a fascinating collection of stories, records, books, and documents showing how bail actually worked in the founding era of the United States.
🚩Adel Aali
host & producer
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