Gideon's Bullhorn: Sounding a Louder, Clearer Call for a Civil Right to Counsel

Abstract

While the right to counsel in criminal proceedings was established by the Supreme Court in Gideon v. Wainwright, the Supreme Court has chosen not to extend that right to the civil context. Since inception, the Civil Gideon movement has sought to establish a civil right to counsel, but has been plagued by setbacks. This article examines those setbacks and advocates for the implementation of a realistic and pragmatically constructed civil equivalent to the right to counsel established in Gideon. By reconciling the heart of Gideon with modern conceptions of morality and offering both criticisms and suggestions, this article offers a renewed vision for the Civil Gideon movement, one that is rooted in the moral/formal tensions of legal liberalism, and that attempts to strike a proper balance between utopian visions of legal paradise and “realistic” understandings grounded in the pessimism of temporal and human limitation.