Nearing Thirty Years: The Burger Court, Strickland v. Washington, and the Parameters of the Right to Counsel

In Strickland v. Washington, the Court issued a standard for determining when defense counsel\u27s ineffective performance, through no direct fault of the prosecution, law enforcement, public, or judiciary, undermined the fairness of a trial such that a conviction or sentence had to be rendered as a violation of due process. The article\u27s conclusion presents a model for applying the legal history underlying Strickland to ineffective assistance cases