Republicans Unleash a Cynical Attack on Our Legal System

Since it seems to have become something of a thing of late, here’s what the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says about the right to an attorney and the right to a fair and speedy trial:

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

You will note that the nation’s foundational document does not say you get to “have the assistance of counsel” for your defense unless you’re an accused terrorist, or a Nazi, or, even if you’re Attila the Hun and you’re fresh off sacking some far-flung province of the Roman Empire.

Nope. You have the right to an attorney. Period. And, as further case law dictates, if you “cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.” It’s legal chapter and verse that every American, raised on a steady diet of Law & Order reruns, knows by heart.

Unless, of course, you’re Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a 2002 graduate of Harvard Law School, who took Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to task on the Senate floor for her previous work as a federal public defender.

As a refresher, the Biden's newly-confirmed Supreme Court pick represented Guantánamo detainees — which, as a federal public defender, is something her job required her to do under the U.S. Constitution.

Then, Cotton, a “no” vote on Jackson’s nomination, who almost certainly knows better, went one better, and brought up the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served on the court from 1941 until his death in 1954.

“You know, the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg to prosecute the case against the Nazis,” Cotton appallingly said. “This Judge Jackson might have gone there to defend them.”

Cotton was half right. The late Justice Jackson did step away from the high court to prosecute Nazis for war crimes at the Nuremberg tribunals. But he not only also supported the defendants’ right to counsel, he also played a key role in helping to enshrine the right to a defense lawyer into international law, the newspaper reported.

But let’s assume for a moment that Cotton was in earnest and wasn’t simply a wingman in the GOP hit squad that worked hard (but failed) to tank the nomination of the first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

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