Court Opinion

ID: 9425899
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:09.32682+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.193160
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Stewaet,
with whom Me. Justice Black-mun joins,
concurring in the result.
The Court today holds that the constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination embraces the right of a testifying party to the unfettered advice of counsel in a civil proceeding. As the Court puts the matter, a “layman may not be aware of the precise scope, the nuances, and boundaries of his Fifth Amendment privilege. It is not a self-executing mechanism; it can be affirmatively waived, or lost by not asserting it in a timely fashion. ... [I]f his lawyer may be punished for advice so given there is a genuine risk that a witness exposed to possible self-incrimination will not be advised of his right. Then the witness may be deprived of the opportunity to decide whether or not to assert the privilege.” Ante, at 466-467.
*471The premise underlying the conclusion that the constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination includes the right to the unfettered advice of counsel in civil proceedings must be that there is a constitutional right, also derived from the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, to some advice of counsel concerning the privilege in the first place. The Court’s rationale thus inexorably implies that counsel must be appointed for any indigent witness, whether or not he is a party, in any proceeding in which his testimony can be compelled. For surely few indigents will be more cognizant than was Maness’ client of the privilege against compulsory self-incrimination, let alone aware of the “nuances” of the privilege. Unless counsel is appointed, these indigents will be deprived, just as surely as Maness’ client would have been had he not been advised by Maness, of the opportunity to decide whether to assert their constitutional privilege. “To hold otherwise would deny the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination the means of its own implementation.” Ante, at 468.
I am unwilling to go that far toward recognizing an unqualified right to appointed counsel in civil proceedings in a case that does not demand it. But I concur in the Court’s judgment upon a wholly different ground.
More than 40 years ago the Court recognized a due process right to retained counsel in civil proceedings. “If in any case, civil or criminal, a state or federal court were arbitrarily to refuse to hear a party by counsel, employed by and appearing for him, it reasonably may not be doubted that such a refusal would be a denial of a hearing, and, therefore, of due process in the constitutional sense.” Powell v. Alabama, 287 U. S. 45, 69. It requires no expansion of this well-established principle to hold that just as a state court may not arbitrarily prohibit retained counsel’s presence in a courtroom, so too it may *472not arbitrarily prohibit or punish good-faith advice given by retained counsel. The “right to be heard by counsel” is frustrated equally by denying the right to have counsel present during trial as by preventing counsel, once in the courtroom, from giving good-faith professional advice to his client.
The right to be advised by retained counsel in a civil proceeding does not, of course, guarantee a lawyer absolute immunity for advice he gives to his client. Whether a contempt citation constitutes an arbitrary interference with the constitutionally protected attorney-client relationship depends on both the tenor of the advice and the circumstances under which it is given. It does not depend solely on the nature of the legal issue involved. Advice to invoke a state-recognized testimonial privilege, for example, may be just as essential to the discharge of a lawyer’s responsibility to his client as was Maness’ advice to invoke the constitutional privilege against compulsory self-incrimination.
The Court’s opinion and Mr. Justice White’s concurring opinion fully explain the circumstances that in this case justified Maness’ advice to his client to refuse to comply with the trial judge’s order to produce the subpoenaed material. Under these circumstances Maness did no more than properly perform the conventional service of a lawyer. To punish him for performing his professional duty in good faith would be an arbitrary interference with his client’s right to the presence and advice of retained counsel — and thus a denial of due process of law.