A Brief History of the Public Defender
The Santa Barbara County Public Defender
The Santa Barbara office was created in 1969 at about the time that many
other Public Defender Offices were created nationally. This was in response to
the United States Supreme Court decision in Gideon
v. Wainwright 372 U.S. 335 (1963). In Gideon
it was held that anyone facing the potential for significant incarceration if
convicted of a criminal charge has the right to a free lawyer should they not
be able to hire one themselves. While this idea was not new to California, the
publicity of the case created a dramatic increase in the number of defendants
asking for lawyers and counties around the state and across the nation rushed
to make use of long-standing laws allowing the creation of such offices.
(Eventually the facts of that case became a movie called Gideon's
Trumpet starring Henry Fonda.)
The
Underpinnings of Public Defender Programs in the U.S.
The roots of our Nation's public defender programs lie in the fertile soil
of the Declaration
of Independence, the Constitution,
and the Bill
of Rights. We should all read and absorb these documents. They are not
long, and they can all be found here,
along with links to other important milestones in the history of individual
rights to legal representation.
Clara Shortridge Foltz:
Midwife of the Public Defender Movement
Read the fascinating story of Clara Foltz, one of the most important and
almost certainly the most under-appreciated women of the late 19th and early
20th centuries; the unsung pioneer of women's rights, arrestee's rights,
prisoner's rights; the first woman lawyer in California, and a pioneering
businesswoman. An unbelievably talented and resilient lady who overcame
interminable obstacles and unspeakable prejudice to achieve goals for women
and the underprivileged that we now take for granted; to her we all owe a huge
debt of gratitude. Little has been written of this historic woman, but we have
here a comprehensively researched scholarly
paper from the Hastings Law
Journal (1976) and a second less
formal article, published in the California Defender Magazine in
1985, containing extended excerpts from the Hastings
paper along with interesting
passages from Foltz' own writings.
Read them online:
The
Battles of Clara Shortridge Foltz
Originally published in the California Defender, Vol. 1, Issue 1;
Spring 1985
Clara
Shortridge Foltz: Pioneer in the Law
Originally Published in the Hastings Law Journal, Vol. 27, January 1976
Or, download PDF versions for local viewing or printing:
The
California Defender Article in PDF
The
Hastings Law Journal Article in PDF
