Chapter 7
Access to the Courts
Chapter Overview
This chapter focuses on prisoners’ right to litigate, whether in civil or criminal actions, and the limitations on that right. Topics include communications between inmates and their attorneys, retaliation by staff that litigation may trigger, communication with attorneys, prison law libraries, and jailhouse lawyers.
Featured Opinions
- Bounds v. Smith, 430 U.S. 817 (1977)
- Ex parte Hull, 312 U.S. 546 (1941)
- Lewis v. Casey, 518 U.S. 343 (1996)
- Johnson v. Avery, 393 U.S. 483 (1969)
- Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396 (1974)
- Shaw v. Murphy, 532 U.S. 223 (2001)
- Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U.S. 539 (1974)
Featured, Cited, and Supplemental Litigation Documents
- Greenhill v. Clarke, No. 18-7300 (4th Cir.)
- Litigation summary and documents
- Brief of Former Corrections Officials as Amici Curiae in Support of Plaintiff-Appellant (Jan. 21, 2019)
Statutes, Treaties, and Regulations
Excerpted Sources & Supplemental Documents
- Eric Blackmon, Litigating from the Inside (2019)
- Calvin Duncan & Sophie Cull, The Jailhouse Lawyer (2025)
- Protecting Religious Freedom after Boerne v. Flores, Hearing before the Subcomm. on the Constitution of the H. Judiciary Comm., 105th Cong., App. at 65-70 (Jul. 14, 1997)
- Includes: Office of the Florida Att’y General, Preliminary Results of the RFRA Survey of All States: The Impact of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on State Correctional Systems (Jul. 19, 1996)
Lived Experiences
Additional Reading
- American Library Association: Prison Libraries
- Douglas Ankney, Attorney-Client Privilege Under Attack in Jails Across the Nation, Prison Legal News (May 2, 2019)
- Caleb Bedillion, Mississippi Says Poor Defendants Must Always Have a Lawyer. Few Courts Are Ready to Deliver., The Marshall Project (Jul. 2023)
- Lynn S. Branham, Limiting the Burdens of Pro Se Inmate Litigation: A Technical-Assistance Manual for Courts, Correctional Officials, and Attorneys General (1997)
- Stephen B. Bright, Neither Equal Nor Just: The Rationing and Denial of Legal Services to the Poor When Life and Liberty Are at Stake, 1997 Ann. Surv. Am. L. 783 (1997)
- Jill Schachner Chanen, Banned in the Bighouse, A.B.A. J. 26 (March 1998)
- Léon Digard & Elizabeth Swavola, Justice Denied: The Harmful and Lasting Effects of Pretrial Detention, Vera (2009)
- Michael S. Hamden, North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services: A Model for Other States?, 40 Crim. L. Bull. No. 2 (2004)
- Ryan Kost, After Jail Deaths and No Justice, This Kentucky Lawyer Tried to Make a Difference, The Marshall Project (Dec. 2024)
- Rachel Poser, Why It’s Nearly Impossible for Prisoners to Sue Prisons, The New Yorker (May 2016)
- Evan R. Seamone, Fahrenheit 451 on Cell Block D: A Bar Examination to Safeguard America’s Jailhouse Lawyers from the Post-Lewis Blaze Consuming Their Law Libraries, 24 Yale L. & Pol’y Rev. 91 (2006)
- Gregory Sick et al., Reading the Prisoner’s Letter: Attorney-Client Confidentiality in Inmate Correspondence Inmate Correspondence, 109 J. Crim. L & Criminology 559 (2019)