(1947).--Acknowledging that the decision is in
line with the precedent of Betts _v._ Brady, Justice Black, who was
joined by Justices Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge, lamented that the
latter was a "kind of precedent [which he] had hoped that the Court
would not perpetuate." Complaining of the loss of certainty occasioned
by the Court's refusal to read into the Fourteenth Amendment the
absolute right to counsel set out in the Sixth Amendment, Justice Black
contends that the fair trial doctrine as enunciated in this and in the
Adamson _v._ California case (_see_ p. 1115) decided on the same day is
"another example of the consequences which can be produced by the
substitution of this Court's day-to-day opinion of what kind of trial is
fair and decent for the kind of trial which the Bill of Rights
guarantees."--Ibid. 139, 140.--In a second dissenting opinion meriting
the concurrence of Justices Black, Douglas, and Murphy, Justice
Rutledge, who also is of the opinion that the absolute right to counsel
granted by the Sixth Amendment should be enjoyed in State criminal
trials, insisted that even under the fair trial doctrine, the accused
had not been accorded due process.

[843] 332 U.S. 145 (1947).

[844] 332 U.S. 561 (1947).

[845] 332 U.S. 596 (1948).

[846] _See_ p. 1103.

[847] 333 U.S. 640, 678, 680-682 (1948).--As against the assertion of
the majority that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
does not of its own force require appointment of counsel for one simply
because he would have a constitutional right to the assistance of
counsel in a comparable federal case, the minority, consisting of
Justices Black, Murphy, and Rutledge speaking through Justice Douglas,
declared that "the Bill of Rights is applicable to all courts at all
times"; for, otherwise, "of what value is the constitutional guarantee
of a fair trial if an accused does not have counsel to advise and defend
him." Noting that all members of the Court were in accord on the
requirement of counsel in capital offenses, the minority contended that
the considerations inducing such unanimity were "equally germane [in
noncapital cases] where liberty rather than life hangs in the balance."
Conceding that "it might not be nonsense to draw the Betts _v._ Brady
line somewhere between that case and the case of one charged with
violation of a parking ordinance, and to say the accused is entitled to
counsel in the former but not in the latter," the mino