Gideon is in the House: Lessons from the Home-Renters' Right-to-Counsel Movement.

Before 2017, no jurisdiction had a home renters' right-to-counsel law. Yet, a mere five years later, three states and fifteen cities afforded renters facing eviction the right to legal representation. This policy intervention, which began in New York, has quickly and decisively swept across America. This article explores the explosion of home renters' right-to-counsel laws to propose a path forward for the larger Civil Gideon movement. Current Supreme Court jurisprudence largely forecloses litigation-based efforts to create a new Constitutional "right" to an attorney in a civil case. Yet local legislative programs, as modeled by the home renters' right-to-counsel movement, may offer a viable path for expanding the right to civil counsel. To that end, it is important to critically examine the success of this movement to understand its lessons. This article attempts just that. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]