Scott v. Illinois
United States Supreme Court case
Scott v. Illinois, 440 U.S. 367 (1979), was a case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States. In Scott, the Court decided whether the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments required Illinois to provide Scott with trial counsel. To emphasize the importance of court-appointed counsel, the Court opined, "[T]he interest protected by the right to have guilt or innocence determined by a jury... while important, is not as fundamental to the guarantee of a fair trial as is the right to counsel."
Background
After being denied a request for court-appointed counsel, Scott was convicted in a bench trial of shoplifting and fined $50. The statute applicable to his case set the maximum penalty at a $500 fine and one year in jail.
Supreme Courts decision
A majority held that Illinois had not violated the Constitution. Writing for four of the justices, Rehnquist clarified the Court's holding in Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) and argued that states could sentence a convicted criminal to imprisonment only if that person had been represented by counsel. Since Scott was not sentenced to imprisonment, even though the applicable statute allowed for it, the state was not obligated to provide counsel.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Scott v. Illinois” is united States Supreme Court case. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Scott, Illinois and United, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7437575. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979 and 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scott v. Illinois” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.