Summary Injustice: A Look at Constitutional Deficiencies in South Carolina's Summary Courts

There is a widely held belief that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel guarantees that all accused persons in the United States never stand alone when the state seeks to deprive them of their liberty. And indeed that should be the case. But in reality, the right to counsel remains elusive, shrouded in the shadow of systemic deficiency. In his classic poem, The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot famously observed, “[b]etween the idea and the reality falls the shadow.” And so it is with the right to counsel in this country. In practice there is a gaping chasm between this fundamental right and its realization. This study of the municipal and magistrate courts of South Carolina documents the existence of that chasm, an abyss into which countless poor people fall as a matter of course in the Palmetto State.