Cite as: 528 U. S. 470 (2000)
Opinion of Ginsburg, J.
having no right to counsel in state postconviction proceedings. See Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U. S. 551, 557 (1987); Murray v. Giarratano, 492 U. S. 1, 12 (1989); cf. Peguero v. United States, 526 U. S., at 30 (O'Connor, J., concurring) ("To require defendants to specify the grounds for their appeal and show that they have some merit would impose a heavy burden on defendants who are often proceeding pro se in an initial 28 U. S. C. § 2255 motion").
In effect, today's decision erodes the principle that a decision about appeal is validly made only by a defendant with a fair sense of what he is doing. Now the decision may be made inadvertently by a lawyer who never utters the word "appeal" in his client's hearing, so long as that client cannot later demonstrate (probably without counsel) that he unwittingly had "nonfrivolous grounds" for seeking review. This state of the law amounts to just such a breakdown of the adversary system that Strickland warned against. "In every case the court should be concerned with whether . . . the result of the particular proceeding is unreliable because of a breakdown in the adversarial process that our system counts on to produce just results." 466 U. S., at 696; see also Rodriquez v. United States, 395 U. S., at 330; Penson v. Ohio, 488 U. S., at 85.
I would hold that in the aftermath of the hearing at which Flores-Ortega was sentenced, his lawyer was obliged to consult with her client about the availability and prudence of an appeal, and that failure to do that violated Strickland's standard of objective reasonableness. I therefore respectfully dissent from Part II-A of the majority's opinion.
Justice Ginsburg, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
This case presents the question whether, after a defendant pleads guilty or is convicted, the Sixth Amendment permits defense counsel simply to walk away, leaving the defendant uncounseled about his appeal rights. The Court is not
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