Cite as: 518 U. S. 343 (1996)
Thomas, J., concurring
of state-sponsored legal assistance for prisoners, Bounds was in fact a major "disruption to traditional prison operation." Vogel, supra, at 87.
The idea that prisoners have a legal right to the assistance that they were traditionally denied is also of recent vintage. The traditional, pre-Bounds view of the law with regard to the State's obligation to facilitate prisoner lawsuits by providing law libraries and legal assistance was articulated in Hatfield v. Bailleaux, 290 F. 2d 632 (CA9), cert. denied, 368 U. S. 862 (1961):
"State authorities have no obligation under the federal Constitution to provide library facilities and an opportunity for their use to enable an inmate to search for legal loopholes in the judgment and sentence under which he is held, or to perform services which only a lawyer is trained to perform. All inmates are presumed to be confined under valid judgments and sentences. If an inmate believes he has a meritorious reason for attacking his, he must be given an opportunity to do so. But he has no due process right to spend his prison time or utilize prison facilities in an effort to discover a ground for overturning a presumptively valid judgment.
"Inmates have the constitutional right to waive counsel and act as their own lawyers, but this does not mean that a non-lawyer must be given the opportunity to acquire a legal education. One question which an inmate must decide in determining if he should represent himself is whether in view of his own competency and general prison regulations he can do so adequately. He must make the decision in the light of the circumstances existing. The state has no duty to alter the circumstances to conform with his decision." 290 F. 2d, at 640-641.
Consistent with the traditional view, the lower courts understood the Constitution only to guarantee prisoners a right
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