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.