Cite as: 528 U. S. 259 (2000)
Souter, J., dissenting
the Fourteenth Amendment 1 requires that indigent appellants be placed on a substantially equal footing through the appointment of counsel at the State's expense. See McCoy v. Court of Appeals of Wis., Dist. 1, 486 U. S. 429, 438 (1988) (referring to "principle of substantial equality").
Two services of appellate counsel are on point here. Appellate counsel examines the trial record with an advocate's eye, identifying and weighing potential issues for appeal. This is review not by a dispassionate legal mind but by a committed representative, pledged to his client's interests, primed to attack the conviction on any ground the record may reveal. If counsel's review reveals arguable trial error, he prepares and submits a brief on the merits and argues the appeal.
The right to the first of these services, a partisan scrutiny of the record and assessment of potential issues, goes to the irreducible core of the lawyer's obligation to a litigant in an adversary system, and we have consistently held it essential to substantial equality of representation by assigned counsel. "The paramount importance of vigorous representation follows from the nature of our adversarial system of justice." Penson v. Ohio, 488 U. S. 75, 84 (1988). See, e. g., Ellis v. United States, 356 U. S. 674, 675 (1958) (per curiam); Douglas, supra, at 357-358; McCoy, supra, at 438. The right is unqualified when a defendant has retained counsel, and I can imagine no reason that it should not be so when counsel has been appointed.
Because the right to the second service, merits briefing, is not similarly unqualified, however, the issue we address
1 The Griffin line of cases has roots in both due process and equal protection, see M. L. B. v. S. L. J., 519 U. S. 102, 120 (1996), but we have noted that "[m]ost decisions in this area have rested on an equal protection framework . . . ," Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U. S. 660, 665 (1983). See also Ross v. Moffitt, 417 U. S. 600, 611 (1974) (noting that right to appellate counsel "is more profitably considered under an equal protection analysis").
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