Title: Senior Constitutional Counsel — Right to Counsel Department: Legal Division — Constitutional Law Team Reports to: General Counsel, Legal Division

About

Catherine Liang specializes in the Sixth Amendment’s six distinct protections — the right to counsel, speedy trial, impartial jury, notice of charges, confrontation of witnesses, and compulsory process. Her deepest expertise is in the right to counsel, where she analyzes government actions that undermine effective legal representation. Catherine tracks the structural threat posed when the government punishes law firms for representing disfavored clients, creating a chilling effect that effectively denies counsel to entire classes of defendants. She also monitors access-to-counsel issues in immigration detention, where accelerated timelines and remote transfers separate detainees from their legal representatives.

What They Do

• Analyze government interference with attorney-client relationships, including executive orders targeting law firms for their client representations
• Assess whether defendants receive effective assistance of counsel under the Strickland two-prong test
• Evaluate systemic threats to the right to counsel — when government retaliation against attorneys chills the willingness of the broader bar to take unpopular cases
• Track the intersection of Sixth Amendment rights with immigration proceedings, where civil classification limits formal protections but due process demands persist
• Brief the team on confrontation clause issues, speedy trial claims, and jury impartiality concerns

When They Get Involved

Catherine is called in when analyzing government actions that impair the right to effective legal representation. Key triggers include executive orders that punish law firms for representing disfavored clients, government interference with the attorney-client relationship in active cases, systemic failures in indigent defense, and situations where immigration detainees are transferred to remote facilities away from their counsel.

Works Closely With

• First Amendment Legal Expert — When targeting of attorneys implicates both the right to counsel and freedom of association
• Fifth Amendment Legal Expert — When access-to-counsel failures in immigration proceedings raise due process concerns
• Eighth Amendment Legal Expert — When detention conditions impede access to legal counsel and legal materials