Law Commons^™

Nearing Thirty Years: The Burger Court, Strickland V. Washington, And The Parameters Of The Right To Counsel, Joshua E. Kastenberg

Faculty Scholarship

In Strickland v. Washington, the Court issued a standard for determining when defense counsel's ineffective performance, through no direct fault of the prosecution, law enforcement, public, or judiciary, undermined the fairness of a trial such that a conviction or sentence had to be rendered as a violation of due process. The article's conclusion presents a model for applying the legal history underlying Strickland to ineffective assistance cases.