Gideon's Trumpet
Anthony Lewis
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 0679723129
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A history of the landmark case of James Earl Gideon's fight for the right to legal counsel. Notes, table of cases, index. The classic backlist bestseller. More than 800,000 sold since its first pub date of 1964.
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of having a formal appointment turned down. But the Court’s appointment of counsel in these circumstances is a little like a Presidential invitation to dine: Few are turned down. On this Friday evening Chief Justice Warren told Davis that the Court had selected Abe Fortas of Washington to represent Gideon. Davis put in a call for Fortas and found him, eventually, in Dallas. Fortas said he would be happy to serve as counsel for Clarence Earl Gideon. He asked what the issue was in Gideon’s case.
be given a lawyer if he asked for one. Krash suggested a more conservative way to argue the Gideon case, which after all did involve a felony and so did not require the more sweeping approach to win the case. The Supreme Court had held that the Sixth Amendment’s jury-trial guarantee for federal defendants “in all criminal prosecutions” did not apply to “petty offenses.” The same line might be drawn in state cases under the Fourteenth Amendment. Another practical question was at what stage of the
some light on a case that the actual parties are not able or willing to provide. One reason for the Supreme Court’s frequent invitation to the Federal Government to participate in non-Government cases is that the Solicitor General, the Justice Department lawyer who officially represents the Government before the Court, provides a degree of expertise and responsibility in advocacy that few private counsel can match. One of the deficiencies of the Supreme Court process is that it often depends on
are as effective as you say, we should get the Sixth Amendment repealed.” Mentz: “Mr. Justice, I didn’t mean to go that far. I meant only that laymen are not at so great a disadvantage—” Justice Douglas: “—as some appellate judges think.” Justice Harlan: “Supposing you had a choice—as you see it, representing the state—of maintaining Betts on the books and then having a succession of cases come to this Court every one of which was reversed by finding special circumstances, so that everyone
another and very different question. If the Court were required to hear every case that a nation of one hundred and eighty million litigious people could contrive to bring within its jurisdiction, the judicial process would quickly break down. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes explained in 1937: “No single court of last resort, whatever the number of judges, could dispose of all the cases which arise in this vast country and which litigants would seek to bring up if the right of appeal were
