Right to Attorney

Winston Churchill once said that the true measure of a civilized society is how it treats people accused of crimes. Although the Bill of Rights included a number of protections for people accused of crime, many of these guarantees went unenforced in state courts, which were held to be outside the reach of the federal Bill of Rights. This policy began to change in the 1930s, and during the 1960s was transformed with almost breathtaking …

…this rule. Twelve of the original thirteen states rejected the English doctrine, and extended the right to have counsel to all criminal cases. Although the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to counsel, makes no reference to providing lawyers for poor people, the federal government began the practice of appointing lawyers in serious cases in the nineteenth century, and a number of states also provided counsel for indigents in felony trials in the twentieth century.