With the Loyola Law School half a mile down the road, it can be embarrassingly easy to forget the Broadway campus is also part of Loyola.

But every once in a while, our compatriots down St. Charles Avenue make a big splash that captures our full attention.

Such is the case in the recent incident involving Loyola law professor Steve Singer. Singer’s decision to help Reese Sims (charged with felony theft of copper from a policeman’s house) find free counsel may have been brash, and we’ll leave it up to the appeals court to decide whether he overstepped his legal boundaries. We will say, however, that his boldness is admirable.

Sims is clearly in need of free legal representation, either from an indigent defense lawyer or a private lawyer working pro bono.

Judge Frank Marullo’s blindness to this fact is puzzling, since a simple query into Sims’ yearly income (it’s less than $10,000) makes it obvious that he’s in no financial position to hire a lawyer.

Marullo said if Singer wanted to appeal his decision, he should have gone through the proper legal channels instead of sidestepping his order.

While this argument holds merit, it seems illogical and vindictive to come down so hard on Singer.

You can’t blame Singer for trying to avoid the legal mire that’s slowing down the criminal justice system at the courthouse on Tulane Avenue and Broad Street.

Moreover, Bradley Black isn’t a public defender. She’s a lawyer who agreed to represent Sims pro bono. While Marullo’s order dictates Sims is ineligible for a public defender, Black doesn’t fit this criterion. Black is a staff lawyer for Loyola’s law clinic, and her decision to represent Sims free of charge is her personal decision.

For Marullo to say he can dictate a lawyer’s decision to represent a man pro bono is to show an alarming degree of confidence in his own power.

Singer is a representative of our self-styled Social Justice University. While we don’t want to place Sims in too partial a light – he’s on trial for felony theft, after all – it’s clear that he’s in need of legal aid.

Whether or not he’s guilty of the crime he’s been charged with, our Founding Fathers built this country around the principle of the right to a fair trial.

Marullo threatened to put Sims in jail if he didn’t hire a lawyer. Sims didn’t have the money to hire a lawyer. Singer helped him, and in the process, disrupted Tulane and Broad’s notorious pattern of inefficiency.

For that, he represents our school well. Whatever happens during his appeal, we’re proud of his willingness to stand up to the local powers that be to make his point.