Cite as: 528 U. S. 152 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
We are not aware of any historical consensus establishing a right of self-representation on appeal. We might, nonetheless, paraphrase Faretta and assert: No State or Colony ever forced counsel upon a convicted appellant, and no spokesman ever suggested that such a practice would be tolerable or advisable. 422 U. S., at 832. Such negative historical evidence was meaningful to the Faretta Court, because the fact that the "[dog] had not barked" 6 arguably demonstrated that early lawmakers intended to preserve the "long-respected right of self-representation" at trial. Ibid. Historical silence, however, has no probative force in the appellate context because there simply was no long-respected right of self-representation on appeal. In fact, the right of appeal itself is of relatively recent origin.
Appeals as of right in federal courts were nonexistent for the first century of our Nation, and appellate review of any sort was "rarely allowed." Abney v. United States, 431 U. S. 651, 656, n. 3 (1977). The States, also, did not generally recognize an appeal as of right until Washington became the first to constitutionalize the right explicitly in 1889.7 There was similarly no right to appeal in criminal cases at common law, and appellate review of any sort was "limited" and "rarely used." 8 Thus, unlike the inquiry in Faretta, the historical evidence does not provide any support for an affirmative constitutional right to appellate self-representation.
The Faretta majority's reliance on the structure of the Sixth Amendment is also not relevant. The Sixth Amendment identifies the basic rights that the accused shall enjoy
6 A. Conan Doyle, Silver Blaze, in The Complete Sherlock Holmes 383, 400 (1938).
7 See Lobsenz, A Constitutional Right to An Appeal: Guarding Against Unacceptable Risks of Erroneous Conviction, 8 U. Puget Sound L. Rev. 375, 376 (1985). Although Washington was the first State to constitutionalize an appeal as of right, almost all of the States historically had some form of discretionary appellate review. See generally L. Orfield, Criminal Appeals in America 215-231 (1939).
8 1 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 308-310 (1883).
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