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Full-Text Articles in Law

Gideon V. Wainwright--From A 1963 Perspective, Jerold H. Israel Jul 2014

Gideon V. Wainwright--From A 1963 Perspective, Jerold H. Israel

Articles

Gideon v. Wainwright is more than a “landmark” Supreme Court ruling in the field of constitutional criminal procedure. As evidenced by the range of celebrators of Gideon’s Fiftieth Anniversary (extending far beyond the legal academy) and Gideon’s inclusion in the basic coverage of high school government courses, Gideon today is an icon of the American justice system. I have no quarrel with that iconic status, but I certainly did not see any such potential in Gideon when I analyzed the Court’s ruling shortly after it was announced in March of 1963. I had previously agreed to write an article for …


An Originalist Argument For A Sixth Amendment Right To Competent Counsel, Erica J. Hashimoto Jul 2014

An Originalist Argument For A Sixth Amendment Right To Competent Counsel, Erica J. Hashimoto

Scholarly Works

The Treason Act of 1696 provided a right to counsel in treason cases in England and laid the framework for the right to counsel both in England and in the United States. Evidence suggests that the Treason Act may have influenced the Framers of the Constitution; thus, any historical understanding of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel should consider the quality of representation treason defendants received. If, as appears to be the case, treason defendants had competent, experienced lawyers representing them, then the Sixth Amendment right to counsel may well include that right to such representation. This Essay suggest that …


Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Before Powell V. Alabama: Lessons From History For The Future Of The Right To Counsel, Sara Mayeux Jul 2014

Ineffective Assistance Of Counsel Before Powell V. Alabama: Lessons From History For The Future Of The Right To Counsel, Sara Mayeux

All Faculty Scholarship

The doctrinal literature on ineffective assistance of counsel typically begins with the 1932 Supreme Court case of Powell v. Alabama. This symposium contribution goes back farther, locating the IAC doctrine’s origins in a series of state cases from the 1880s through the 1920s. At common law, the traditional agency rule held that counsel incompetence was never grounds for a new trial. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, state appellate judges chipped away at that rule, developing a more flexible doctrine that allowed appellate courts to reverse criminal convictions in cases where, because of egregious attorney ineptitude, there was reason …


Videoconference Technology And The Confrontation Clause, Russell Kostelak Apr 2014

Videoconference Technology And The Confrontation Clause, Russell Kostelak

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

No abstract provided.


Gideon V. Wainwright A Half Century Later, Yale Kamisar Jan 2014

Gideon V. Wainwright A Half Century Later, Yale Kamisar

Reviews

When he was nearing the end of his distinguished career, one of my former law professors observed that a dramatic story of a specific case "has the same advantages that a play or a novel has over a general discussion of ethics or political theory." Ms. Houppert illustrates this point in her very first chapter.


Observers As Participants: Letting The Public Monitor The Criminal Justice Bureaucracy, Stephanos Bibas Jan 2014

Observers As Participants: Letting The Public Monitor The Criminal Justice Bureaucracy, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Civil Rights In Crisis: The Racial Impact Of The Denial Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel, Richard Klein Jan 2014

Civil Rights In Crisis: The Racial Impact Of The Denial Of The Sixth Amendment Right To Counsel, Richard Klein

Scholarly Works

Whereas in 2013 there had been widespread celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, much has been written in subsequent years about the unhappy state of the quality of counsel provided to indigents. But it is not just defense counsel who fail to comply with all that we hope and expect would be done by those who are part of our criminal courts; prosecutorial misconduct, if not actually increasing, is becoming more visible. The judiciary chooses to focus on the rapid processing of cases, often ignoring the rights of those being prosecuted …


The Limits Of Textualism In Interpreting The Confrontation Clause, Stephanos Bibas Jan 2014

The Limits Of Textualism In Interpreting The Confrontation Clause, Stephanos Bibas

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


Gideon And The Effective Assistance Of Counsel: The Rhetoric And The Reality, David Rudovsky Jan 2014

Gideon And The Effective Assistance Of Counsel: The Rhetoric And The Reality, David Rudovsky

All Faculty Scholarship

There is general agreement that the “promise” of Gideon has been systematically denied to large numbers of criminal defendants. In some cases, no counsel is provided; in many others, excessive caseloads and lack of resources prevent appointed counsel from providing effective assistance. Public defenders are forced to violate their ethical obligations by excessive case assignments that make it impossible for them to practice law in accordance with professional standards, to say nothing of Sixth Amendment commands. This worsening situation is caused by the failure of governmental bodies to properly fund indigent defense services and by the refusal of courts to …


The Mold That Shapes Hearsay Law, Richard D. Friedman Jan 2014

The Mold That Shapes Hearsay Law, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

In response to an article previously published in the Florida Law Review by Professor Ben Trachtenberg, I argue that the historical thesis of Crawford v. Washington is basically correct: The Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment reflects a principle about how witnesses should give testimony, and it does not create any broader constraint on the use of hearsay. I argue that this is an appropriate limit on the Clause, and that in fact for the most part there is no good reason to exclude nontestimonial hearsay if live testimony by the declarant to the same proposition would be admissible. I …