presence of counsel for Ms. Lassiter could not have made a determinative difference. True, a lawyer might have done more with the argument that William should live with Ms. Lassiter's mother-but that argument was quite explicity made by both Lassiters, and the evidence that the elder Ms. Lassiter had said she could not handle another child, that the social worker's investigation had led to a similar conclusion, and that the grandmother had displayed scant interest in the child once he had been removed from her daughter's custody was, though controverted, sufficiently substantial that the absence of counsel's guidance on this point did not render the proceedings fundamentally unfair. Finally, a court deciding whether due process requires the appointment of counsel need not ignore a parent's plain demonstration that she is not interested in attending a hearing. Here, the trial court had previously found that Ms. Lassiter had expressly declined to appear at the 1975 child custody hearing, Ms. Lassiter had not even bothered to speak to her retained lawyer after being notified of the termination hearing, and the court specifically found that Ms. Lassiter's failure to make an effort to contest the termination proceeding was without cause. In view of all these circumstances, we hold that the trial court did not err in failing to appoint counsel for Ms. Lassiter. IV In its Fourteenth Amendment, our Constitution imposes on the States the standards necessary to ensure that judicial proceedings are fundamentally fair. A wise public policy, however, may require that higher standards be adopted than those minimally tolerable under the Constitution. Informed opinion has clearly come to hold that an indigent parent is Ms. Lassiter's argument here that her mother should have been given custody of William is hardly consistent with her argument in the collateral attack on her murder conviction that she was innocent because her mother was guilty. See n. 1, supra. BURGER, C. J., concurring 452 U.S. entitled to the assistance of appointed counsel not only in parental termination proceedings, but in dependency and neglect proceedings as well. IJA-ABA Standards for Juvenile Justice, Counsel for Private Parties 2.3 (b) (1980); Uniform Juvenile Court Act § 26 (a), 9A U. L. A. 35 (1979); National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Model Rules for Juvenile Courts, Rule 39 (1969); U. S. Dept. of HEW, Children's Bureau, Legislative Guide for Drafting Family and Juvenile Court Acts § 25 (b) (1969); U. S. Dept. of HEW, Children's Bureau, Legislative Guides for the Termination of Parental Rights and Responsibilities and the Adoption of Children, Pt. II, §8 (1961); National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Standard Juvenile Court Act § 19 (1959). Most significantly, 33 States and the District of Columbia provide statutorily for the appointment of counsel in termination cases. The Court's opinion today in no way implies that the standards increasingly urged by informed public opinion and now widely followed by the States are other than enlightened and wise. For the reasons stated in this opinion, the judgment is affirmed. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER, concurring. It is so ordered. I join the Court's opinion and add only a few words to emphasize a factor I believe is misconceived by the dissenters. The purpose of the termination proceeding at issue here was not "punitive." Post, at 48. On the contrary, its purpose was protective of the child's best interests. Given the record in this case, which involves the parental rights of a mother under lengthy sentence for murder who showed little interest in her son, the writ might well have been a "candidate" for dismissal as improvidently granted. See ante, at 32–33. However, I am content to join the narrow holding of the Court, leaving the appointment of counsel in termination 18 BLACKMUN, J., dissenting proceedings to be determined by the state courts on a caseby-case basis. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN and JUSTICE MARSHALL join, dissenting. The Court today denies an indigent mother the representation of counsel in a judicial proceeding initiated by the State of North Carolina to terminate her parental rights with respect to her youngest child. The Court most appropriately recognizes that the mother's interest is a "commanding one," ante, at 27, and it finds no countervailing state interest of even remotely comparable significance, see ante, at 27-28, 31. Nonetheless, the Court avoids what seems to me the obvious conclusion that due process requires the presence of counsel for a parent threatened with judicial termination of parental rights, and, instead, revives an ad hoc approach thoroughly discredited nearly 20 years ago in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963). Because I believe that the unique importance of a parent's interest in the care and custody of his or her child cannot constitutionally be extinguished through formal judicial proceedings without the benefit of counsel, I dissent. I This Court is not unfamiliar with the problem of determining under what circumstances legal representation is mandated by the Constitution. In Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455 (1942), it reviewed at length both the tradition behind the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in criminal trials and the historical practices of the States in that area. The decision in Betts-that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel did not apply to the States and that the due process guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment permitted a flexible, case-bycase determination of the defendant's need for counsel in state criminal trials-was overruled in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S., at 345. The Court in Gideon rejected the Betts BLACKMUN, J., dissenting 452 U.S. reasoning to the effect that counsel for indigent criminal defendants was "not a fundamental right, essential to a fair trial.'" 372 U. S., at 340 (quoting Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S., at 471). Finding the right well founded in its precedents, the Court further concluded that "reason and reflection require us to recognize that in our adversary system of criminal justice, any person haled into court, who is too poor to hire a lawyer, cannot be assured a fair trial unless counsel is provided for him." 372 U. S., at 344. Similarly, in Argersinger v. Hamlin, 407 U. S. 25 (1972), assistance of counsel was found to be a requisite under the Sixth Amendment, as incorporated into the Fourteenth, even for a misdemeanor offense punishable by imprisonment for less than six months.1 Outside the criminal context, however, the Court has relied on the flexible nature of the due process guarantee whenever it has decided that counsel is not constitutionally required. The special purposes of probation revocation determinations, and the informal nature of those administrative proceedings, including the absence of counsel for the State, led the Court to conclude that due process does not require counsel for probationers. Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778, 785–789 (1973). In the case of school disciplinary proceedings, which are brief, informal, and intended in part to be educative, the Court also found no requirement for legal counsel. Goss v. Lopez, 419 U. S. 565, 583 (1975). Most recently, the Court declined to intrude the presence of counsel for a minor facing voluntary civil commitment by his parent, because of the parent's substantial role in that decision and because of the decision's essentially medical and informal nature. Parham v. J. R., 442 U. S. 584, 604-609 (1979). In each of these instances, the Court has recognized that 1 In Scott v. Illinois, 440 U. S. 367 (1979), the Court's analysis of Sixth Amendment jurisprudence led to the conclusion that the right to counsel is not constitutionally mandated when imprisonment is not actually imposed. 18 BLACKMUN, J., dissenting what process is due varies in relation to the interests at stake and the nature of the governmental proceedings. Where the individual's liberty interest is of diminished or less than fundamental stature, or where the prescribed procedure involves informal decisionmaking without the trappings of an adversarial trial-type proceeding, counsel has not been a requisite of due process. Implicit in this analysis is the fact that the contrary conclusion sometimes may be warranted. Where an individual's liberty interest assumes sufficiently weighty constitutional significance, and the State by a formal and adversarial proceeding seeks to curtail that interest, the right to counsel may be necessary to ensure fundamental fairness. See In re Gault, 387 U. S. 1 (1967). To say this is simply to acknowledge that due process allows for the adoption of different rules to address different situations or contexts. It is not disputed that state intervention to terminate the relationship between petitioner and her child must be accomplished by procedures meeting the requisites of the Due Process Clause. Nor is there any doubt here about the kind of procedure North Carolina has prescribed. North Carolina law requires notice and a trial-type hearing before the State on its own initiative may sever the bonds of parenthood. The decisionmaker is a judge, the rules of evidence are in force, and the State is represented by counsel. The question, then, is whether proceedings in this mold, that relate to a subject so vital, can comport with fundamental fairness when the defendant parent remains unrepresented by counsel. As the Court today properly acknowledges, our consideration of the process due in this context, as in others, must rely on a balancing of the competing private and public interests, an approach succinctly described in Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U. S. 319, 335 (1976). As does the majority, I 2 See also Little v. Streater, ante, at 5-6, 13-16; Smith v. Organization of Foster Families, 431 U. S. 816, 848-849 (1977); Morrissey v. Brewer, |