A liberal court created the affirmative right to an attorney

6th Amendment

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Gideon v. Wainwright

Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), is a landmark case in United States Supreme Court history. 

In it, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that states are required under the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to provide an attorney to defendants in criminal cases who are unable to afford their own attorneys. 

The case extended the right to counsel, which had been found under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to impose requirements on the federal government, by imposing those requirements upon the states as well.

Only a liberal court will force states to hire enough of them (maybe about ten or twenty times as many as we have), and pay them decently, and not charge indigent defendants for their services.

Yes, I watched John Oliver discuss the way the system actually works in various states, the worst of them being Florida.

Apparently more conservative courts since 1963 have had the effrontery to claim such practises are consistent with Gideon.

And his show on bail was equally horrifying.

Conservatives regularly declare they aim to undo every progressive achievement going back to the beginning of the 20th Century.

Conservative lawyers, judges, and scholars, for their part, have made no secret of their hostility toward the liberal jurisprudence that has also achieved so much, and their conviction that that jurisprudence rests on incorrect - often egregiously incorrect - readings of the constitution.

Nor is their increasing willingness to overturn what they claim are wrong decisions any secret.