Today, the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to counsel to every person (adult and juvenile, at trial and on appeal) who faces potential time in jail. The Constitution also requires that an attorney be present for an indigent defendant at every critical stage of their case and that the attorney must provide effective representation.
Here, we examine the history of United States Supreme Court cases behind the right to counsel to understand its origins and how it developed in our American justice system. Read your way through at the links below.
- Introducing the right to counsel
- Liberty versus tyranny under the U.S. Constitution
- Applying the Bill of Rights to state governments
- The story of the Scottsboro Boys in Powell v. Alabama
- Understanding Powell v. Alabama
- The right to counsel in federal trials in Johnson v. Zerbst
- Fundamental fairness in Betts v. Brady
- The post-Betts era in the states’ courts
- Gideon v. Wainwright, the watershed moment
- Understanding Gideon’s impact, Part 1: right to counsel services
- Understanding Gideon’s impact, Part 2: the birth of the public defender movement
- Introduction to the right to counsel for children in juvenile courts
- The right to counsel for children in juvenile transfer hearings, Kent v. United States
- The right to counsel for children in delinquency cases, In re Gault
- The state courts in the post-Gideon era
- Fundamental fairness revisited in Argersinger v. Hamlin
- Drawing the line at actual imprisonment in Scott v. Illinois
- Appointing counsel in the post-Scott era
- Understanding Alabama v. Shelton
- Defining when the right to counsel must be made available in Rothgery v. Gillespie County
