The Review: Volume 14Issue 1

Closing Address

This Colloquium goes to the heart of what our legal system is all about; that our society is not ready to address such crucial issues is troublesome, and very damning.

Panel Discussion on Systemic Challenges and Strategies for Reform to the Public Defender System

I think the law schools are a good place to formulate different models because they are less subject to the pressures of the private bar and large institutional defenders.

Responses to Systemic Challenge and Strategies for Reform Papers

The ultimate questions are who is going to be employed in these defender agencies and what is their commitment to the individuals and the necessary lawyering tasks.

Panel Discussion of Effective Assistance on the Assembly Line

If lawyers love to try cases, why don't they try them? One reason is that the system attaches enormous consequences to a defend-ant's decision to stand trial.

Responses to Free Counsel: A Right, Not a Charity & Determining Client Eligibility for Appointed Counsel

The grim reception given to Jim Neuhard's idea that the state should assume all defense costs indicates how far even the experts have moved away from the concept that an adequate defense is a critically important part of any real

Panel Discussion of Effective Assistance of Counsel: The Constitutional Standard

If effective assistance of counsel standards are going to change, they will probably change first in capital cases because the stakes are so high.

Responses to The Adversary System, Advocacy, and Effective Assistance of Counsel in Criminal Cases

The argument that the Court should provide standards for the benefit of attorneys is an argument for a prophylactic approach to constitutional law, an approach that is difficult to defend.

Panel Discussion of Response to Divided Loyalties: Musings on Some Ethical Dilemmas for the Institutional Criminal Defense Attorney

How would you distinguish between overzealous representation, and collaboration with the court and the district attorney, which dilutes the quality of ethical representation?

Responses to Divided Loyalties: Musings on Some Ethical Dilemmas for the Institutional Criminal Defense Attorney

A lawyer's ability to invoke discretion is one of the things she offers her client, as well as one of the sources of the problem we're talking about today.

Preface -- Effective Assistance of Counsel for the Indigent Criminal Defendant: Has the Promise Been Fulfilled

Motivated by our concern about these problems, the Review of Law & Social Change sponsored a colloquium on March 23, 1985 to examine a variety of issues involving the effective assistance of counsel for the indigent criminal defendant.

What is the Assistance of Counsel Effective For

We should take little comfort in devising rules and institutions that purport to protect defendants as long as punishment remains our overriding goal.

Systems for Providing Indigent Defense: An Introduction

However, when the resources provide dare not adequate to allow the system to fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide competent representation, the government's desire to economize, no matter how understandable, must be constrained.

Systemic Reform: Some Thoughts on Taking the Horse before the Cart

Even if the judiciary were willing to intervene in the manner suggested by the authors, which I seriously question, improvement in the delivery of defense services will not occur until the profession, through legal education and the process of certification,

Right to Counsel and the Indigent Defense System

A survey of cases such as Cronic, Strickland, and Cooper demonstrating the system-wide burdens on public defenders.

Personal Failure, Institutional Failure, and the Sixth Amendment

The American system of criminal justice is distinctive in three respects. First, it makes the kind of justice that a defendant receives more dependent on the quality of counsel than any other legal system in the world.

Litigative Approaches to Enforcing the Right to Effective Assistance of Counsel in Criminal Cases

Argument that courts must approach the failure to fund public defenders at the systemic level rather than on a case-by-case basis.

Free Counsel: A Right, Not a Charity

Only when the general public believes that they themselves may rely on as-signed counsel will they be concerned about the quality and availability of legal assistance.

The Ethical Dilemmas of Public Defenders in Impact Litigation

The institutional lawyer's already hectic life of high caseloads and constant emergencies will be complicated further by lengthy discussions with clients about conflicts and potential consequences of such conflicts.

Effective Assistance on the Assembly Line

Thus, even under conditions of assembly line justice, a system of public trials is bound to produce more accurate, better informed determinations of guilt than a system of plea bargaining.

Keynote Address -- Effective Assistance of Counsel for the Indigent Criminal Defendant: Has the Promise Been Fulfilled

Unless criminal defense lawyers are adequately compensated and are able to function effectively, the capacity of government to overreach will not be challenged, and the great protections of the Bill of Rights will not be realized by all citizens.

Divided Loyalties: Musings on Some Ethical Dilemmas for the Institutional Criminal Defense Attorney

As over-worked as the institutional lawyer may be, very often she is the best person to represent the accused.

Dilemmas in New Models for Indigent Defense

However, it is critical to move away from a focus on individual cases of injustice towards a system-wide view.

Determining Client Eligibility for Appointed Counsel: A Strategy for Reform in New York State

The ultimate catalyst for change, however, should be a statewide public defense commission comprised of attorneys and laypersons who have demonstrated an interest in public defense services, as well as representatives of impoverished and low-income communities throughout New York State.

Criminal Trials, Negotiated Pleas, and the Effective Assistance of Counsel: Notes about and Toward a Theory of the Attorney's Role in Case Resolution

These bench tri-als may have their place, and attorneys may effectively represent particulardefendants at these trials; but this admission is a far cry from a convincing argument that bench trials are both realistic and desirable alternatives to the possibility of

Bench Trials, Adversariness, and Plea Bargaining: A Comment on Schulhofers's Plan

More generally, I think the most important lesson to be drawn from Schulhofer's study of Philadelphia is that vigorous advocacy is not as dependent upon the form or forum of decision making as it is upon the quality of representation

The Adversary System, Advocacy, and Effective Assistance of Counsel in Criminal Cases

If we really wish to ensure effective assistance of counsel, we must create rigorous advocacy-based standards of defense counsel competency, provide adequate teaching and support systems for the provision of criminal justice defense services, and depend less on after-the-fact judicial

N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change

Legal Scholarship for Systemic Change