The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees a criminal defendant “the right to . . . have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence,” and since Gideon v Wainwright (372 US 335 [1963]) it has been established that that entitlement may not be effectively denied by the State by reason of a defendant's inability to pay for a lawyer. Gideon is not now controversial either as an expression of what the Constitution requires or as an exercise in elemental fair play. Serious questions have, however, arisen in this and other jurisdictions as to whether Gideon's mandate is being met in practice (see e.g. Lavallee v Justices in Hampden Superior Ct., 442 Mass 228, 812 NE2d 895 [2004]).

In New York, the Legislature has left the performance of the State's obligation under Gideon to the counties, where it is discharged, for the most part, with county resources and according to local rules and practices (see County Law arts 18-A, 18-B). Plaintiffs in this action, defendants in various criminal prosecutions ongoing at the time of the action's commencement in Washington, Onondaga, Ontario, Schuyler and Suffolk counties, contend that this arrangement, involving what is in essence a costly, largely unfunded and politically unpopular mandate upon local government, has functioned to deprive them and other similarly situated indigent defendants in the aforementioned counties of constitutionally and statutorily guaranteed representational rights. They seek a declaration that their rights and those of the class they seek to represent *16 are being violated and an injunction to avert further abridgment of their right to counsel; they do not seek relief within the criminal cases out of which their claims arise.

This appeal results from dispositions of defendants' motion pursuant to CPLR 3211 to dismiss the action as nonjusticiable. Supreme Court denied the motion, but in the decision and order now before us (66 AD3d 84 [2009]) the sought relief was granted by the Appellate Division. That court held that there was no cognizable claim for ineffective assistance of counsel other than one seeking postconviction relief, and, relatedly, that violation of a criminal defendant's right to counsel could not be vindicated in a collateral civil proceeding, particularly where the object of the collateral action was to compel an additional allocation of public resources, which the court found to be a properly legislative prerogative. Two Justices dissented. They were of the view that violations of the right to counsel were actionable in contexts other than claims for postconviction relief, including a civil action such as that brought by plaintiffs. While recognizing that choices between competing social priorities are ordinarily for the Legislature, this did not, in the dissenters' judgment, excuse the Judiciary from its obligation to provide a remedy for violations of constitutional rights (id. at 95), especially when the alleged violations were “so interwoven with, and necessarily implicate[d], the proper functioning of the court system itself” (id. at 96).

Plaintiffs have appealed as of right from the Appellate Division's order pursuant to CPLR 5601 (a) and (b) (1). We now reinstate the action, albeit with some substantial qualifications upon its scope.

Defendants' claim that the action is not justiciable rests principally on two theories: first, that there is no cognizable claim for ineffective assistance of counsel apart from one seeking relief from a conviction, and second, that recognition of a claim for systemic relief of the sort plaintiffs seek will involve the courts in the performance of properly legislative functions, most notably determining how public resources are to be allocated.

The first of these theories is rooted in case law conditioning relief for *3 constitutionally ineffective assistance upon findings that attorney performance, when viewed in its total, case specific aspect, has both fallen below the standard of objective reasonableness (see Strickland v Washington, 466 US 668, 687-688 [1984]), and resulted in prejudice, either with respect to the outcome of the proceeding (id. at 694) or, under this Court's somewhat less outcome oriented standard of “meaningful assistance,” to the defendant's right to a fair trial (People v Benevento, 91 NY2d 708, 713-714 [1998]). Defendants reason that the prescribed, deferential (see Strickland, 466 US at 689; Benevento, 91 NY2d at 712) and highly context sensitive inquiry into the adequacy and particular effect of counsel's performance cannot occur until a prosecution has concluded in a conviction, and that, once there is a conviction, the appropriate avenues of relief are direct appeals and the various other established means of challenging a conviction, such as CPL article 440 motions and petitions for writs of habeas corpus or coram nobis. They urge, in essence, that the present plaintiffs can, based upon their ongoing prosecutions, possess no ripe claim of ineffective assistance and that any ineffective assistance claims that might eventually be brought by them would, given the nature of the claim, have to be individually asserted and determined; they argue that a finding of constitutionally deficient performance—one necessarily rooted in the particular circumstances of an individual case—cannot serve as a predicate for systemic relief. Indeed, they remind us that the Supreme Court in Strickland has noted pointedly that “the purpose of the effective assistance guarantee of the Sixth Amendment is not to improve the quality of legal representation, although that is a goal of considerable importance to the legal system[,] . . . [but rather] to ensure that criminal defendants receive a fair trial” (466 US at 689).

(1) These arguments possess a measure of merit. A fair reading of Strickland and our relevant state precedents supports defendants' contention that effective assistance is a judicial construct designed to do no more than protect an individual defendant's right to a fair adjudication; it is not a concept capable of expansive application to remediate systemic deficiencies. The cases in which the concept has been explicated are in this connection notable for their intentional omission of any broadly applicable defining performance standards. Indeed, Strickland is clear that articulation of any standard more specific than that of objective reasonableness is neither warranted by the Sixth Amendment nor compatible with its objectives:

Having said this, however, we would add the very important caveat that Strickland's approach is expressly premised on the supposition that the fundamental underlying right to representation under Gideon has been enabled by the State in a manner that would justify the presumption that the standard of objective reasonableness will ordinarily be satisfied (see Strickland *19 , 466 US at 687-689). The questions properly raised in this Sixth Amendment-grounded action, we think, go not to whether ineffectiveness has assumed systemic dimensions, but rather to whether the State has met its foundational obligation under Gideon to provide legal representation.

Inasmuch as general prescriptive relief is unavailable and indeed incompatible with the adjudication of claims alleging constitutionally ineffective assistance of counsel, it follows that plaintiffs' claims for prospective systemic relief cannot stand if their gravamen is only that attorneys appointed for them have not, so far, afforded them meaningful and effective representation. While it is defendants' position, and was evidently that of the Appellate Division majority, that the complaint contains only performance-based claims for ineffective assistance, our examination of the pleading leads us to a different conclusion.

According to the complaint, 10 of the 20 plaintiffs—two from Washington, two from Onondaga, two from Ontario and four from Schuyler County—were altogether without representation at the arraignments held in their underlying criminal proceedings. Eight of these unrepresented plaintiffs were jailed after bail had been set in amounts they could not afford. It is *5 alleged that the experience of these plaintiffs is illustrative of what is a fairly common practice in the aforementioned counties of arraigning defendants without counsel and leaving them, particularly when accused of relatively low level offenses, unrepresented in subsequent proceedings where pleas are taken and other critically important legal transactions take place. One of these plaintiffs remained unrepresented for some five months and it is alleged that the absence of clear and uniform guidelines reasonably related to need has commonly resulted in denials of representation to indigent defendants based on the subjective judgments of individual jurists.

In addition to the foregoing allegations of outright nonrepresentation, the complaint contains allegations to the effect that although lawyers were eventually nominally appointed for plaintiffs, they were unavailable to their clients—that they conferred with them little, if at all, were often completely unresponsive to their urgent inquiries and requests from jail, sometimes for months on end, waived important rights without consulting them, and ultimately appeared to do little more on their behalf than act as conduits for plea offers, some of which purportedly were highly unfavorable. It is repeatedly alleged that counsel missed court appearances, and that when they did *20 appear they were not prepared to proceed, often because they were entirely new to the case, the matters having previously been handled by other similarly unprepared counsel.¹ There are also allegations that the counsel appointed for at least one of the plaintiffs was seriously conflicted and thus unqualified to undertake the representation.

(2) The allegations of the complaint must at this stage of the litigation be deemed true and construed in plaintiffs' favor, affording them the benefit of every reasonable inference (Leon v Martinez, 84 NY2d 83, 87-88 [1994]), the very limited object being to ascertain whether any cognizable claim for relief is made out (id.). If there is a discernible claim, that is where the inquiry must end; the difficulty of its proof is not the present concern. The above summarized allegations, in our view, state cognizable Sixth Amendment claims.

It is clear that a criminal defendant, regardless of wherewithal, is entitled to “ ‘the guiding hand of counsel at every step in the proceedings against him’ ” (Gideon v Wainwright, 372 US at 345, quoting Powell v Alabama, 287 US 45, 69 [1932]). The right attaches at arraignment (see Rothgery v Gillespie County, 554 US 191, 128 S Ct 2578 [2008]) and entails the presence of counsel at each subsequent “critical” stage of the proceedings (Montejo v Louisiana, 556 US —, 129 S Ct 2079 [2009]). As is here relevant, arraignment itself must under the circumstances alleged be deemed a critical stage since, even if guilty pleas were not then elicited *6 from the presently named plaintiffs,² a circumstance which would undoubtedly require the “critical stage” label (see Coleman v Alabama, 399 US 1, 9 [1970]), it is clear from the complaint that plaintiffs' pretrial liberty interests were on that occasion regularly adjudicated (see also CPL 180.10 [6]) with most serious consequences, both direct and collateral, including the loss of employment and housing, and inability to support and care for particularly needy dependents. There is no question that “a bail hearing is a critical stage of the State's criminal process” (Higazy v Templeton, 505 F3d 161, 172 [2d Cir 2007] [internal quotation marks and citation omitted]).

Recognizing the crucial importance of arraignment and the extent to which a defendant's basic liberty and due process *21 interests may then be affected, CPL 180.10 (3) expressly provides for the “right to the aid of counsel at the arraignment and at every subsequent stage of the action” and forbids a court from going forward with the proceeding without counsel for the defendant, unless the defendant has knowingly agreed to proceed in counsel's absence (CPL 180.10 [5]).³ Contrary to defendants' suggestion and that of the dissent, nothing in the statute may be read to justify the conclusion that the presence of defense counsel at arraignment is ever dispensable, except at a defendant's informed option, when matters affecting the defendant's pretrial liberty or ability subsequently to defend against the charges are to be decided. Nor is there merit to defendants' suggestion that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel is not yet fully implicated (see Rothgery, 554 US at 209).

The cases cited by the dissent in which the allegedly consequential event at arraignment was the entry of a not guilty plea (United States ex rel. Caccio v Fay, 350 F2d 214, 215 [2d Cir 1965]; United States ex rel. Combs v Denno, 357 F2d 809, 812 [2d Cir 1966]; United States ex rel. Hussey v Fay, 220 F Supp 562 [SD NY 1963]; Holland v Allard, 2005 WL 2786909, 2005 US Dist LEXIS 46609 [ED NY 2005]) do not stand for the proposition that counsel, as a general matter, is optional at arraignment. Indeed, such a proposition would plainly be untenable since arraignments routinely, and in New York as a matter of statutory design, *7 encompass matters affecting a defendant's liberty and ability to defend against the charges. The cited cases rather stand for the very limited proposition that where it happens that what occurs at arraignment does not affect a defendant's ultimate adjudication, a defendant is not on the ground of nonrepresentation entitled to a reversal of his or her conviction. Plaintiffs here do not seek that relief. Rather, they seek prospectively to assure the provision of what the Constitution undoubtedly guarantees—representation at all critical stages of the criminal proceedings. In New York, arraignment is, as a general matter, such a stage.

Also “critical” for Sixth Amendment purposes is the period between arraignment and trial when a case must be factually *22 developed and researched, decisions respecting grand jury testimony made, plea negotiations conducted, and pretrial motions filed. Indeed, it is clear that “to deprive a person of counsel during the period prior to trial may be more damaging than denial of counsel during the trial itself” (Maine v Moulton, 474 US 159, 170 [1985]).

This complaint contains numerous plain allegations that in specific cases counsel simply was not provided at critical stages of the proceedings. The complaint additionally contains allegations sufficient to justify the inference that these deprivations may be illustrative of significantly more widespread practices; of particular note in this connection are the allegations that in numerous cases representational denials are premised on subjective and highly variable notions of indigency, raising possible due process and equal protection concerns. These allegations state a claim, not for ineffective assistance under Strickland, but for basic denial of the right to counsel under Gideon.

Similarly, while variously interpretable, the numerous allegations to the effect that counsel, although appointed, were uncommunicative, made virtually no efforts on their nominal clients' behalf during the very critical period subsequent to arraignment, and, indeed, waived important rights without authorization from their clients, may be reasonably understood to allege nonrepresentation rather than ineffective representation. Actual representation assumes a certain basic representational relationship. The allegations here, however, raise serious questions as to whether any such relationship may be really said to have existed between many of the plaintiffs and their putative attorneys and cumulatively may be understood to raise the distinct possibility that merely nominal attorney-client pairings occur in the subject counties with a fair degree of regularity, allegedly because of inadequate funding and staffing of indigent defense providers. It is very basic that

While it may turn out after further factual development that what is really at issue is whether the representation afforded was effective—a subject not properly litigated in this civil action—at this juncture, construing the allegations before us as we must, in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, the complaint states a claim for constructive denial of the right to counsel by reason of insufficient compliance with the constitutional mandate of Gideon.⁴ The dissent's conclusion that these allegations assert only performance based claims, and not claims for nonrepresentation, seems to us premature. The picture which emerges from a fair and procedurally appropriate reading of the complaint is that defendants are with some regularity going unrepresented at arraignment and subsequent critical stages. As noted, half the plaintiffs claim to have been without counsel at arraignment, and nearly all claim to have been left effectively without representation for lengthy periods subsequent to arraignment. If all that were involved was a “lumping together of 20 generic ineffective assistance of counsel claims” (dissenting op at 30) we would agree with the dissent that no cognizable claim had been stated, but we do not think that this detailed, multi-tiered complaint meticulously setting forth the factual bases of the individual claims and the manner in which they are linked to and illustrative of broad systemic deficiencies is susceptible of such characterization.

Collateral preconviction claims seeking prospective relief for absolute, core denials of the right to the assistance of counsel cannot be understood to be incompatible with Strickland. These are not the sort of contextually sensitive claims that are typically involved when ineffectiveness is alleged. The basic, unadorned question presented by such claims where, as here, the defendant-claimants are poor, is whether the State has met its obligation to provide counsel, not whether under all the circumstances counsel's performance was inadequate or prejudicial. Indeed, in cases of outright denial of the right to counsel prejudice is presumed. Strickland itself, of course, recognizes the critical distinction between a claim for ineffective assistance and one alleging simply that the right to the assistance of counsel has been denied and specifically acknowledges that the *24 latter kind of claim may be disposed of without inquiring as to prejudice:

The allegations before us state claims falling precisely within this described category. It is true, as the dissent points out, that claims, even within this category, have been most frequently litigated postconviction, but it does not follow from this circumstance that they are not cognizable apart from the postconviction context. Given the simplicity and autonomy of a claim for nonrepresentation, as opposed to one truly involving the adequacy of an attorney's performance, there is no reason—and certainly none is identified in the dissent—why such a claim cannot or should not be brought without the context of a completed prosecution.

Although defendants contend otherwise, we perceive no real danger that allowing these claims to proceed would impede the orderly progress of plaintiffs' underlying criminal actions. Those actions have, for the most part, been concluded,⁵ and we have, in any event, removed from the action the issue of ineffective assistance, thus eliminating any possibility that the collateral adjudication of generalized claims of ineffective assistance might be used to obtain relief from individual judgments of conviction.⁶ Here we emphasize that our recognition that *10 plaintiffs may have claims for constructive denial of counsel should not *25 be viewed as a back door for what would be nonjusticiable assertions of ineffective assistance seeking remedies specifically addressed to attorney performance, such as uniform hiring, training and practice standards. To the extent that a cognizable Sixth Amendment claim is stated in this collateral civil action, it is to the effect that in one or more of the five counties at issue the basic constitutional mandate for the provision of counsel to indigent defendants at all critical stages is at risk of being left unmet because of systemic conditions, not by reason of the personal failings and poor professional decisions of individual attorneys. While the defense of indigents in the five subject counties might perhaps be improved in many ways that the Legislature is free to explore, the much narrower focus of the constitutionally based judicial remedy here sought must be simply to assure that every indigent defendant is afforded actual assistance of counsel, as Gideon commands. Plainly, we do not, even while narrowing the scope of this action as we believe the law requires, deny plaintiffs a remedy for systemic violations of Gideon, as the dissent suggests. It is rather the dissent that would foreclose plaintiffs from any prospect of obtaining such relief. And, when all is said and done, the dissent's proposed denial is premised solely upon the availability of relief from a judgment of conviction. Neither law, nor logic, nor sound public policy dictates that one form of relief should be preclusive of the other.

As against the fairly minimal risks involved in sustaining the closely defined claim of nonrepresentation we have recognized must be weighed the very serious dangers that the alleged denial of counsel entails. “ ‘Of all [of] the rights that an accused person has, the right to be represented by counsel is by far the most pervasive for it affects his ability to assert any other rights he may have’ ” (United States v Cronic, 466 US at 654, quoting Schaefer, Federalism and State Criminal Procedure, 70 Harv L Rev 1, 8 [1956]). The failure to honor this right, then, cannot but be presumed to impair the reliability of the adversary process through which criminal justice is under our system of *26 government dispensed. This action properly understood, as it has been by distinguished members of the prosecution and defense bars alike, does not threaten but endeavors to preserve our means of criminal adjudication from the inevitably corrosive effects and unjust consequences of an unfair adversary process.

It is not clear that defendants actually contend that stated claims for the denial of assistance of counsel would be nonjusticiable; their appellate presentation, both written and oral, has been principally to the effect that the claims alleged are exclusively predicated on deficient performance, a characterization which we have rejected. Supposing, however, a persisting, relevant contention of nonjusticiability, it is clear that it would be without merit. This is obvious because the right that plaintiffs would enforce— *11 that of a poor person accused of a crime to have counsel provided for his or her defense—is the very same right that Gideon has already commanded the states to honor as a matter of fundamental constitutional necessity. There is no argument that what was justiciable in Gideon is now beyond the power of a court to decide.

It is, of course, possible that a remedy in this action would necessitate the appropriation of funds and perhaps, particularly in a time of scarcity, some reordering of legislative priorities. But this does not amount to an argument upon which a court might be relieved of its essential obligation to provide a remedy for violation of a fundamental constitutional right (see Marbury v Madison, 1 Cranch [5 US] 137, 147 [1803] [“every right, when withheld, must have a remedy, and every injury its proper redress”]).

We have consistently held that enforcement of a clear constitutional or statutory mandate is the proper work of the courts (see Campaign for Fiscal Equity v State of New York, 86 NY2d 307 [1995]; Jiggetts v Grinker, 75 NY2d 411 [1990]; McCain v Koch, 70 NY2d 109 [1987]; Klostermann v Cuomo, 61 NY2d 525 [1984]), and it would be odd if we made an exception in the case of a mandate as well-established and as essential to our institutional integrity as the one requiring the State to provide legal representation to indigent criminal defendants at all critical stages of the proceedings against them.

Assuming the allegations of the complaint to be true, there is considerable risk that indigent defendants are, with a fair degree of regularity, being denied constitutionally mandated counsel in *27 the five subject counties. The severe imbalance in the adversary process that such a state of affairs would produce cannot be doubted. Nor can it be doubted that courts would in consequence of such imbalance become breeding grounds for unreliable judgments. Wrongful conviction, the ultimate sign of a criminal justice system's breakdown and failure, has been documented in too many cases. Wrongful convictions, however, are not the only injustices that command our present concern. As plaintiffs rightly point out, the absence of representation at critical stages is capable of causing grave and irreparable injury to persons who will not be convicted. Gideon's guarantee to the assistance of counsel does not turn upon a defendant's guilt or innocence, and neither can the availability of a remedy for its denial.

Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should be modified, without costs, by reinstating the complaint in accordance with this opinion, and remitting the case to that court to consider issues raised but not determined on the appeal to that court, and, as so modified, affirmed.