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Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court ruled that the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution requires U.S. states to provide attorneys to criminal defendants who are unable to afford their own.
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Usually considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to formerly enslaved Americans following the American Civil War.
A primary motivation for this clause was to validate the equality provisions contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which guaranteed that all citizens would have the right to equal protection by law. As a whole, the Fourteenth Amendment marked a large shift in American constitutionalism, by applying substantially more constitutional ...
The Supreme Court has applied all but one of this amendment's protections to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants nine different rights, including the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury consisting of jurors from the state and district in ...
Former Tennessee Attorney General Paul G. Summers writes this regular civics education guest opinion column about the U.S. Constitution.
Although our First Amendment rights guarantee we can express even the most controversial views without interference from the government, there are limits. These include: Inciting lawlessness.
During colonial times, English speech regulations were rather restrictive.The English criminal common law of seditious libel made criticizing the government a crime. Lord Chief Justice John Holt, writing in 1704–1705, explained the rationale for the prohibition: "For it is very necessary for all governments that the people should have a good opinion of it."
Giving those deluded voters fodder for their belief that powerful people in American public life (constitutional lawyers and state Supreme Court judges appointed by Democrats) actually are seeking ...