Sixth Amendment

“ Our Constitution sets up a federal union, not a monolith.
This Court has heretofore held that various provisions of the Bill of Rights such as the freedom of speech and religion guarantees of the First Amendment, the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures in the Fourth Amendment, the privilege against self-incrimination of the Fifth Amendment, and the right to counsel and to confrontation under the Sixth Amendment "are all to be enforced against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment according to the same standards that protect those personal rights against federal encroachment." ”

“ Read against this backdrop, the Sixth Amendment appears to have been understood at the time of ratification as a rejection of the English common-law rule that prohibited counsel, not as a guarantee of government-funded counsel.
This understanding–that the Sixth Amendment did not require appointed counsel for defendants–persisted in the Court’s jurisprudence for nearly 150 years. See United States v. Van Duzee, 140 U. S. 169, 173 (1891) (“There is, however, no general obligation on the part of the government [to] retain counsel for defendants or prisoners”) ”

“ As the Court's opinion suggests, the Confrontation Clause comes to us on faded parchment. History seems to give us very little insight into the intended scope of the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause. Commentators have been prone to slide too easily from confrontation to cross-examination.
Against this amorphous backdrop I reach two conclusions. First, the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment reaches no farther than to require the prosecution to produce and available witness whose declarations it seeks to use in a criminal trial. ”

“ Neither logic nor history nor the intent of the draftsmen of the Fourteenth Amendment can possibly be said to require that the Sixth Amendment or its jury trial provision be applied to the States together with the total gloss that this Court's decisions have supplied. The draftsmen of the Fourteenth Amendment intended what they said, not more or less; that no State shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. ”

“ People of State of New York, 346 U.S. 156, 195-196, 73 S.Ct. 1077, 1098 1099, 97 L.Ed. 1522. But of course since Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, it no longer can broadly be said that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to state courts. ”

“ These difficulties led the Attorneys General of 22 States to urge that this Court overrule Betts v. Brady and apply fully the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of right to counsel to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. See Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, 372 U.S., at 336, 83 S.Ct., at 792. And to deny to the States the power to impair a fundamental constitutional right is not to increase federal power, but, rather, to limit the power of both federal and state governments in favor of safeguarding the fundamental rights and liberties of the individual. ”

“ If the accused, however, is not represented by counsel and has not competently and intelligently waived his constitutional right, the Sixth Amendment stands as a jurisdictional bar to a valid conviction and sentence depriving him of his life or his liberty. A court's jurisdiction at the hearing of trial may be lost 'in the course of the proceedings' due to failure to complete the court-as the Sixth Amendment requires-by providing counsel for an accused who is unable to obtain counsel, who has not intelligently waived this constitutional guaranty, and whose life or liberty is at stake. ”

“ To invoke the Sixth Amendment interest is, as a matter of fact, not to invoke the Miranda-Edwards interest. One might be quite willing to speak to the police without counsel present concerning many matters, but not the matter under prosecution. ”

“ The same is not so with respect to the Sixth Amendment. The exclusion of statements made by a represented and indicted defendant outside the presence of counsel follows not as a remedy for a violation that has preceded trial but as a necessary incident of the constitutional right itself. [7] " [T] he Sixth Amendment right to counsel exists, and is needed, in order to protect the fundamental right to a fair trial." ”

“ In this manner, by both its plain text and inclusion in section 9, the Suspension Clause differs from the Fourth Amendment, which establishes a “right of the people,” the Fifth Amendment, which limits how a “person shall be held,” and the Sixth Amendment, which provides rights to “the accused.” ”

“ To the contrary, our cases hold that the Sixth Amendment entitles every defendant to object to a venire that is not designed to represent a fair cross section of the community, whether or not the systematically excluded groups are groups to which he himself belongs." 493 U.S., at 477, 110 S.Ct., at 805 (emphasis added) .
Thus, today's holding cannot be considered in accordance with our prior law. It is a clear departure. ”

“ Significantly, the Court also fails to explain adequately why the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and the jury trial guarantee of the Sixth Amendment require application of its rule. Upon closer examination, it is possible that the Court's "increase in the maximum penalty" rule rests on a meaningless formalism that accords, at best, marginal protection for the constitutional rights that it seeks to effectuate. ”

“ When we analyze the claim prisoners are asserting and the court below sustained, it amounts to a right not to be tried at all for an offense against our armed forces. If the Fifth Amendment protects them from military trial, the Sixth Amendment as clearly prohibits their trial by civil courts. ”

“ Rather, JUSTICE THOMAS divines the common-law understanding of the Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights by consulting decisions rendered by American courts well after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, ranging primarily from the 1840's to the 1890's. ”

“ The Court has never explained the Confrontation Clause implications of a State's decision to adopt an exception not recognized at common law or one not recognized by a majority of the States. Our current jurisprudence suggests that, in order to satisfy the Sixth Amendment, the State would have to establish in each individual case that hearsay admitted pursuant to the newly created exception bears "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness," and would have to continue doing so until the exception became "firmly rooted" in the common law, if that is even possible under the Court's standard. ”

“ Massachusetts, 557 U. S. 305, 313 (2009) . That conclusion follows from the text of the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right of the accused to “confron [t] ” “witnesses against him” (emphasis added) , not just those witnesses who “ ‘facially incriminat [e] ’ ” him, contra, ante, at 9–10. ”

“ More careful investigation may prove the law to be unsound in principle. Experience may show it to be imperfect in detail and impracticable in execution. And then both reason and right combine not merely to justify but to require its repeal.
The Constitution, supreme, as it is, over all the departments of the Government—legislative, executive, and judicial—is open to amendment by its very terms; and Congress or the States may, in their discretion, propose amendment to it, solemn compact though it in truth is between the sovereign States of the Union. ”

“ After listening to Lucy Stone plead for renewed work for woman suffrage and for petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment, she spontaneously rose to her feet and asked permission to speak. "I hope," she began, "that the work of this association, if it be organized, will be to go in strong array up to the Capitol at Washington to demand a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution. ”

“ Preliminarily we observe that, unless there be some real conflict between the Sixteenth Amendment and the prohibition, in article 3, section 1, making the compensation of the judges undiminishable, effect must be given to the latter as well as to the former; and also that a purpose to depart from or imperil a constitutional principle so widely esteemed and so vital to our system of government as the independence of the judiciary is not lightly to be assumed. ”

“ The Ninth Amendment obviously does not create federally enforceable rights. It merely says, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." ”

“ If the Constitution is to command the kind of respect which shall make it the steadfast bulwark of our institutions, the guaranty of our union and our welfare, it must preserve the character that befits such an instrument. The Eighteenth Amendment, if it were not odious as a perversion of the power of the Constitution, would be contemptible as an offense against its dignity. ”

“ And so the Sixteenth Amendment completely fails to establish the clarity of consent, necessary to let us continue freemen, except regarding but one phase of the matter, "income" alone. It not only does not grant but absolutely negatives any further power. We know how modern amendments to the Constitution have been made. We cannot possibly know how Congress and the Legislatures came to let down the bars in a matter that the Constitution still admittedly declares dangerous to American Liberty, as a general principle. ”

“ In strict conformity to the Statute of ’76 and to the sole American concept of the relation between government and human being, those grants of power to interfere with individual freedom, like every other grant of that kind until the Eighteenth Amendment, were made by the respective citizens to their respective governments. ”

“ I entirely agree with you that, while agitation in the States is necessary as a means of education, a sixteenth amendment to the national constitution is the quickest, surest and least laborious way to secure the success of this great work for human liberty. Any legislature of Indiana in the last six years would have ratified such an amendment. ”

“ Suppose that Congress, when proposing the Eleventh Amendment, had appended to it a proviso that nothing therein contained should prevent a State from being sued by its own citizens in cases arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States: can we imagine that it would have been adopted by the States? ”

“ In fine, the legislation which Congress is authorized to adopt in this behalf is not general legislation upon the rights of the citizen, but corrective legislation, that is, such as may be necessary and proper for counteracting such laws as the States may adopt or enforce, and which, by the amendment, they are prohibited from making or enforcing, or such acts and proceedings as the States may commit or take, and which, by the amendment, they are prohibited from committing or taking. It is not necessary for us to state, if we could, what legislation would be proper for Congress to adopt. ”

“ The purpose of that Amendment is to extend to the citizens and residents of the states the same protection against arbitrary state legislation affecting life, liberty, and property, as is afforded by the 5th Amendment against similar legislation by Congress. ”