Review: Gideon's Trumpet

Title: Gideon's Trumpet
Author: Anthony Lewis
Publisher: New York: Vintage Books, 1964
ISBN: 0-679-72312-9

Anthony Lewis tells the story of Clarence Earl Gideon, the stubborn prisoner whose case caused the Supreme Court to require states to provide attorneys to anyone, accused of a crime, who could not afford one. Gideon's Trumpet is longer than it had to be, but that doesn't impede the reading and only helps turn a single case into a much larger educational experience. Lewis explains how the Supreme Court works, explores different theories of Fourteenth Amendment incorporation of rights that are still relevant to today's criminal procedure, and discusses the history and use of amicus curiae briefs.

Lewis presents the case as a real-life occurrence, showing Gideon's crankiness and eccentricities. He shows the historical setting of the events, and then shows how the the facts behind the case make for an exciting story with a few twists, such as the opposition's plans for amicus filings that backfired. Gideon's Trumpet provides a sense of satisfaction from justice being served, while recounting a historical event; explaining judicial process and the inner workings of the Supreme Court; and illustrating the humanness that drives the whole business.

Notes

William Howard Taft noted that the primary reason for granting certiarori "is not primarily to preserve the rights of the litigants. The Supreme Court's function is for the purpose of expounding and stabilizing principles of law for the benefit of the people of the country, passing upon constitutional questions and other important questions of law for the public benefit" (26).
Abe Fortas was assigned to Gideon's case. Francis Biddle, Attorney General at the times, tells the story about Franklin Roosevelt not remembering Fortas' name when Fortas was Undersecretary of the Interior. Roosevelt pased a note asking Biddle for Fortas' name.

"Fortas," I whispered, and his name was relayed to the President, who then wrote on a pad, "Not his last name, his first name." And when, going around the table, he came to Abe, the President asked, "Well, Abe, what's been going on in Interior" (53)?
Fortas argued the Durham case, in which the DC Court of Appeals through out the "act was the product of mental disease or defect" test for criminal insanity (54).
Adamson v. California in 1947 was (at the time) the high-water mark of Fourteenth Amendment incorporation, in which Justices Black, Douglas, Frank Murphy, and Wiley B. Rutledge read the Fourteenth Amendment as applying the entire Bill of Rights to states. Since then the Court has said that a state denial of any "fundamental" right violates the Fourteenth Amendment (94).
When the opposition attorney, Jacob, sent letters to states urging them to file amicus briefs against Gideon, he was surprised to find that many of them were in favor of requiring counsel. The attorney general of Minnesota, Walter F. Mondale, turned around and encouraged the writing of an amicus brief by 23 states in favor of Gideon (155). Oregon wrote that, in its experience, requiring states to provide defendants with counsel "would be less expensive ... than to attempt by a post-conviction proceeding to recover justice lost by defects at the trial" (158).