Related Citations

  • Erica J. Hashimoto, An Originalist Argument for a Sixth Amendment Right to Competent Counsel, 99 Iowa L. Rev. 1999 (2014).

    Arguing that the Treason Act began the trend in England towards allowing defense counsel in felony cases which was ultimately adopted by the Framers in the Sixth Amendment. Documenting that the definition of “counsel” in the English Treason Act of 1696 encompassed, at a minimum, the right to be represented by a bar-certified lawyer and that this definition influenced the American colonial understanding of “counsel.”

  • Laura I. Appleman, The Community Right to Counsel, 17 Berkeley J. Crim. L. 1 (2012).

    Refuting interpretations of the Right-to-Counsel Clause indicating that it was understood as providing a balancing mechanism for the defendant against the powerful government and thereby safeguarding the sanctity of the adversarial system. Arguing, based on early colonial charters and other Founding-era documents, the colonial legal system and society, and the scholarship of early legal writers and theorists, that this Clause was understood as serving the collective interest in bringing justice–and later, rehabilitation–to wrongdoers in community by legitimizing and increasing the fairness and clarity of proceedings through the provision of counsel for the accused.

  • John E. Spomer, III, Scared to Death: The Separate Right to Counsel at Capital Sentencing, 26 Hastings Const. L.Q. 505 (1999).

    Contending, based on the guarantees of the Judiciary Act of 1789 and the congressional Act of 1790, both passed by a Congress composed of many of the Framers, that the Right-to-Counsel Clause ensured defendants the right to counsel in all criminal proceedings.

  • Akhil Reed Amar, Sixth Amendment First Principles, 84 Geo. L.J. 641 (1996).

    Concluding, based on the text and overall structure of the Sixth Amendment, that the right to counsel attaches when someone is formally accused of criminal wrongdoing and that included in this right is a guarantee that the state will fund such assistance.

  • Bruce A. Green, Lethal Fiction: The Meaning of “Counsel” in the Sixth Amendment, 78 Iowa L. Rev. 433 (1993).

    Analyzing Founding-Era state constitutions and legislation as well as the ratifying debates to conclude that “counsel” in the Right-to-Counsel Clause was understood to refer to licensed practitioners, or, in other words, based on the late eighteenth-century meaning, individuals whose virtue of knowledge of the law and legal practice qualified them to try cases.

  • Laurie S. Fulton, The Right to Counsel Clause of the Sixth Amendment, 26 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 1599 (1989).

    Documenting that the the Sixth Amendment right to counsel was intended to correct the inadequacies of the English criminal justice system of the 17th century, in which the right to counsel was not granted to all accused persons.

  • Charles Donahue, Jr., An Historical Argument for the Right to Counsel During Police Interrogation, 73 Yale L.J. 1000 (1964).

    Arguing based on colonial-era state constitutions that the right to counsel was understood as being the right to assistance for a full defense, incorporating the English abolition of the former practice of only providing assistance of counsel for issues of law but not for issues of fact.