Introduction

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The 1960S

Today, thousands of public defenders around the United States represent indigent defendants in criminal proceedings. At a moment of widespread concern about mass incarceration and racial and class inequality, public defenders are seen both as participants in, and adversaries of, the carceral state. The introduction to this book provides an overview of how public defenders became so widespread in American courtrooms. At the turn of the twentieth century, many elite lawyers expressed skepticism about the public defender. They posited that the legal profession should remain independent from the state as much as possible, and that indigent defense was better handled by private charity. They established voluntary defender organizations. But by the 1960s, prevailing views had changed. Many elite lawyers now endorsed the public defender, especially after the Supreme Court decided the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright, which expanded the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The book argues that these developments can be explained by shifts in liberalism and how lawyers conceived of the profession’s place within liberal democracy.

A Permanent Crisis

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 117-150
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Trial Advocacy ◽  
Reform Organizations

This chapter traces the rocky implementation of Gideon v. Wainwright between 1963 and 1973, continuing the Massachusetts case study begun in chapter 2 and also addressing developments in Philadelphia and other localities. Although states could technically comply with Gideon in a variety of ways (e.g. appointing private counsel case-by-case),many lawyers and reform organizations interpreted Gideon as a broader mandate to establish and expand institutionalized public defender offices. The Ford Foundation and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA) embarked upon the National Defender Project, an ambitious nationwide effort. As a result of such efforts, the 1960s witnessed change and growth in public defender offices around the country. In Massachusetts, for example, the organization initially founded as a voluntary defender was converted from a private charity into a statewide public defender agency, hired dozens of new lawyers, and was soon handling tens of thousands of cases each year. Yet, criticisms quickly emerged that public defenders had overwhelming caseloads and resorted too often to plea bargaining, rather than trial advocacy. Reformers diagnosed a new problem, the “indigent defense crisis” that persists today.

Local Injustice

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 151-180
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
Local Communities ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
War On Crime ◽  
The Government

With snapshots of Massachusetts and Mississippi, among other examples, this chapter continues to trace how the implementation of Gideon v. Wainwright fell short of expectations in local communities. In particular, it examines some of the efforts funded by the National Defender Project, an initiative of the Ford Foundation and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association (NLADA). This initiative funded the establishment and expansion of public defender offices around the country. Yet many challenges remained. Criminal defendants themselves complained that public defenders did not sufficiently understand their circumstances—spurring new experiments like the “community defender,” a new model of public defender with stronger ties to the neighborhoods where many defendants lived. By the early 1970s, as indigent defense reformers continued to navigate these challenges, the government had declared “War on Crime” and criminal caseloads had begun to rise—early harbingers of the phenomenon later labelled mass incarceration. Over the course of the twentieth century, lawyers had coalesced in theory around the idea of the public defender as a means to guarantee equality in the criminal courts, but remained unsuccessful at fully implementing that idea around the country.

Free Justice

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Legal Profession ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Public Defenders ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Right ◽  
Corporate Lawyers

Every day, in courtrooms around the United States, thousands of criminal defendants are represented by public defenders--lawyers provided by the government for those who cannot afford private counsel. Though often taken for granted, the modern American public defender has a surprisingly contentious history--one that offers insights not only about the "carceral state," but also about the contours and compromises of twentieth-century liberalism. First gaining appeal amidst the Progressive Era fervor for court reform, the public defender idea was swiftly quashed by elite corporate lawyers who believed the legal profession should remain independent from the state. Public defenders took hold in some localities but not yet as a nationwide standard. By the 1960s, views had shifted. Gideon v. Wainwright enshrined the right to counsel into law and the legal profession mobilized to expand the ranks of public defenders nationwide. Yet within a few years, lawyers had already diagnosed a "crisis" of underfunded, overworked defenders providing inadequate representation--a crisis that persists today. This book shows how these conditions, often attributed to recent fiscal emergencies, have deep roots, and it chronicles the intertwined histories of constitutional doctrine, big philanthropy, professional in-fighting, and Cold War culture that made public defenders ubiquitous but embattled figures in American courtrooms.

From Charity to Right

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 57-85
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
Due Process ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Constitutional Right

Using a case study of Massachusetts, this chapter traces a shift between the 1930s and the 1950s in how elite lawyers framed the problem of indigent defense—from a problem for private charity to a constitutional right requiring public support. By the 1930s, lawyers in several cities had established voluntary defender organizations as a private charitable alternative to the public defender. Meanwhile, a series of Supreme Court cases, interpreting the due process requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment, steadily expanded the constitutional right to counsel in criminal trials, culminating in the 1942 decision of Betts v. Brady. Voluntary defenders typically had volatile funding, and lawyers increasingly worried that these private organizations lacked adequate resources to fulfill the expanding constitutional mandate to provide counsel for indigent defendants. By the 1950s, many lawyers worried that private charity was inadequate to satisfy a constitutional right, and increasingly viewed the public defender as preferable to the voluntary defender.

Free Justice

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 24-56
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Legal Profession ◽  
Public Prosecutor ◽  
Law Firms ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Legal Aid ◽  
Criminal Courts ◽  
The Public ◽  
Indigent Defense ◽  
Private Charity

This chapter describes Progressive Era debates within the legal profession over proposals to establish a “public defender” in the criminal courts—a public official who would represent criminal defendants and counterbalance the public prosecutor. It describes different versions of the public defender idea, as developed by California lawyer Clara Foltz, New York lawyer Mayer Goldman, and the prominent Massachusetts lawyer Reginald Heber Smith, author of Justice and the Poor. Leaders of the bar, often affiliated with corporate law firms, expressed concerns that the public defender represented a step towards socialization of the legal profession. Instead, they preferred to handle indigent defense and other forms of legal aid through private charity. In 1917, New York lawyers rejected proposals for a government-controlled public defender and instead established a criminal branch of the Legal Aid Society.

The Constitutionality of Involuntary Civil Commitment of Opiate Addicts

1988 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 641-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Civil Commitment ◽  
The United States ◽  
Involuntary Treatment ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Narcotic Trafficking ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Opiate Addicts ◽  
The 1960S

This paper deals with the constitutionality of involuntary treatment of opiate addicts. Although the first laws permitting involuntary treatment of opiate addicts were enacted in the second half of the nineteenth century, addicts were not committed in large numbers until California and New York enacted new civil commitment legislation in the 1960s. Inevitably, the courts were called upon to decide if involuntary treatment was constitutional. Both the California and New York courts decided that it was. These decisions were heavily influenced by statements made by the United States Supreme Court in Robinson v. California. The Robinson case did not actually involve the constitutionality of involuntary treatment; it involved the question of whether it was constitutional for a state to make addiction a crime. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court declared (in a dictum) that a state might establish a program of compulsory treatment for opiate addicts either to discourage violation of its criminal laws against narcotic trafficking or to safeguard the general health or welfare of its inhabitants. Presumably because the Robinson case did not involve the constitutionality of involuntary treatment of opiate addicts, the Supreme Court did not go into that question as deeply as it might have. The California and New York courts, in turn, relied too much on this dictum and did not delve deeply into the question. The New York courts did a better job than the California courts, but their work too was not as good as it should have been.

Cost Containment in the Health Care Field and the Antitrust Laws

1982 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-435
Author(s):  
David I. Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medical Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Antitrust Laws ◽  
Care Field ◽  
Antitrust Analysis ◽  
Care Costs

AbstractThe Supreme Court of the United States and other courts currently are considering the question of the extent to which the health care field should be subject to antitrust rules. This Article explores the special characteristics of the health care field, and the problems they create for antitrust analysis. Two current cases—Arizona v. Maricopa County Medical Society (awaiting decision by the Supreme Court) and Kartell v. Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Inc. (pending in the District of Massachusetts)—illustrate the issues raised by efforts to contain health care costs through the setting of maximum fees. This Article suggests that traditional antitrust principles should and will prevail over arguments that such restraints are in the public interest.

Education

2021 ◽  
pp. 90-113
Author(s):  
Crawford Gribben
Keyword(s):  
Public Schools ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
The United States ◽  
Day Schools ◽  
Government Schools ◽  
Home Schools ◽  
The Public ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
American Children ◽  
The 1960S

Since the 1960s, a growing number of American evangelicals have withdrawn their children from “government schools,” seeking alternative provision either in private Christian day schools or in parentally provided education within the home. Over two million American children are being home educated, and in the last few years, the number of children involved in home education has grown at a rate around twelve times that of the number of students entering public schools. Across the United States, but especially in north Idaho, an increasing number of believers are turning to several varieties of Christian education to dispute the minoritarian and subcultural assumptions of those believers who have conceded to liberal expectations, and to educate a generation of the faithful that will work to reclaim and eventually control the cultural mainstream. The influence of conservative religion on the public school system has never been greater, but in home schools, private schools, and liberal arts colleges, education has become a vital weapon in strategies of survival and resistance in evangelical America.

Democratic Justice

Free Justice ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 86-116
Author(s):  
Sara Mayeux
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Public Defender ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Defense Attorneys ◽  
The Public ◽  
Criminal Defense ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Cold War

In contrast to earlier periods when elite lawyers expressed skepticism of the public defender, this chapter describes the Cold War moment when elite lawyers, like the New York lawyer Harrison Tweed, celebrated the public defender as central to the “American way of life.” By the 1950s, lawyers and political leaders touted the rights that U.S. Constitution afforded to criminal defendants as hallmarks of democracy. These rights were thought to exemplify democratic regard for the individual, in contrast to the state-dominated show trials that symbolized totalitarianism. Within this context, criminal defense attorneys were rhetorically celebrated and the public defender was reframed from a harbinger of socialism into an anticommunist figure. In 1963, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Gideon v. Wainwright, further enshrining the constitutional right to counsel. Gideon held that the Sixth Amendment requires states to provide counsel to indigent defendants in all serious felony trials. The decision was celebrated and chronicled in the widely read book by journalist Anthony Lewis, Gideon’s Trumpet, and the Ford Foundation announced ambitious plans for a nationwide initiative to expand public defender offices.

The Turning Point

2019 ◽  
pp. 301-352
Author(s):  
Steven K. Green
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Vatican Ii ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Public Support ◽  
The Public ◽  
Education Legislation ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Impact

This chapter examines the various events that undermined the public support for church–state separation in the 1960s. It considers the impact of Vatican II, of ecumenism, of the civil rights movement, and of federal social welfare and education legislation on Protestant attitudes. All of these events encouraged Protestants and Catholics to find common ground in working for the greater societal good. These events also suggested a model of church-state cooperation rather than one of separation. The chapter then segues to consider the various church–state cases before the Supreme Court between 1968 and 1975 in which the justices began to step back from applying a strict separationist approach to church–state controversies.

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