Court Opinion

ID: 9426764
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:52.486874+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:02.993727
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
with whom The Chief Justice joins, dissenting.
In view of the importance of the writ of habeas corpus in our constitutional scheme, “ 'it is fundamental that access of prisoners to the courts for the purpose of presenting their complaints may not be denied or obstructed.’ ” Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539, 578, quoting Johnson v. Avery, 393 U. S. 483, 485. From this basic principle the Court over five years ago made a quantum jump to the conclusion that a State has a constitutional obligation to provide law libraries for prisoners in its custody. Younger v. Gilmore, 404 U. S. 15.
Today the Court seeks to bridge the gap in analysis that made Gilmore’s authority questionable. Despite the Court’s valiant efforts, I find its reasoning unpersuasive.
If, as the Court says, there is a constitutional duty upon a State to provide its prisoners with “meaningful access” to the federal courts, that duty is not effectuated by adhering to the unexplained judgment in the Gilmore case. More than 20 years of experience with pro se habeas corpus petitions as a Member of this Court and as a Circuit Judge have convinced me that “meaningful access” to the federal courts can seldom be realistically advanced by the device of making law libraries available to prison inmates untutored in their use. In the vast majority of cases, access to a law library will, I am convinced, simply result in the filing of pleadings heavily larded with irrelevant legalisms—possessing the veneer but lacking the substance of professional competence.
If, on the other hand, Mr. Justice Rehnquist is correct in his belief that a convict in a state prison pursuant to a *837final judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction has no constitutional right of “meaningful access’' to the federal courts in order to attack his sentence, then a State can be under no constitutional duty to make that access “meaningful.” If the extent of the constitutional duty of a State is simply not to deny or obstruct a prisoner’s access to the courts, Johnson v. Avery, supra, then it cannot have, even arguably, any affirmative constitutional obligation to provide law libraries for its prison inmates.
I respectfully dissent.