During the 2011 term, the United States Supreme Court recognized the reality that you read about since the midterm: most criminal cases are settled before trial in plea bargains. The role of the court, judges, and formal court procedures intended to promote fairness, consistency and due process become essentially meaningless when supplanted by plea bargains. Seeing this, the Court in Missouri v. Frye and Lafler v. Cooper, held that criminal defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel during plea negotiations.

For this project, you will review your readings in your text and read about these seminal Supreme Court decisions. You will then write a 500-700 word essay responding to the prompt below:

Did the Supreme Court get it right when they decided that the Sixth Amendment protects criminal defendants by requiring effective assistance of counsel during plea negotiations or are the strong dissents in these cases persuasive and correct?