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Counsel And Confrontation, Todd E. Pettys
Counsel And Confrontation, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
Responding to the Court’s recent reworking of its confrontation jurisprudence, I argue that, under the Anglo-American common-law principles that the Confrontation Clause now incorporates, defendants are not entitled to an attorney’s assistance when interrogating witnesses prior to trial. Although the Assistance of Counsel Clause and the Due Process Clauses will pick up the slack in many cases, I contend that there are other instances in which the Constitution now leaves unrepresented defendants responsible for cross-examining witnesses on their own. I suggest that legislative reform may be necessary to ameliorate the new constitutional landscape’s deficiencies.
The Myth Of The Written Constitution, Todd E. Pettys
The Myth Of The Written Constitution, Todd E. Pettys
Todd E. Pettys
Many Americans have long subscribed to what this Article calls the myth of the written constitution—the claim that the nation’s Constitution consists entirely of those texts that the sovereign American people have formally ratified, and the claim that the will of the American people, as expressed in those ratified texts, determines the way in which properly behaving judges resolve constitutional disputes. Drawing on two different meanings of the term myth, this Article contends that neither of those claims is literally true, but that Americans’ attachment to those claims serves at least three crucial functions. Subscribing to the myth helps to …