It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to discover a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet...to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. This is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

We may be well on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated.

[I]n constitutional adjudication some steps, which when taken were thought to approach 'the verge,' have become the platform for yet further steps. A certain momentum develops in constitutional theory and it can be a 'downhill thrust' easily set in motion but difficult to retard or stop.

Crime and the fear of crime have permeated the fabric of American life.

Guilt or innocence becomes irrelevant in the criminal trials as we flounder in a morass of artificial rules poorly conceived and often impossible [to apply].

We are more casual about qualifying the people we allow to act as advocates in the courtroom than we are about licensing electricians.