A payphone customer making a long-distance call with an access code or 1-800 number issued by a long-distance carrier pays the carrier (which completes the call). The carrier then compensates the payphone operator (which connects the call to the carrier in the first place). The payphone operator can sue the long-distance carrier for any compensation that the carrier fails to pay for these "dial-around" calls. Many payphone operators assign their dial-around claims to billing and collection firms (aggregators) so that, in effect, these aggregators can bring suit on their behalf. A group of aggregators (respondents here) were assigned legal title to the claims of approximately 1,400 payphone operators. The aggregators separately agreed to remit all proceeds to those operators, who would then pay the aggregators for their services. After entering into these agreements, the aggregators filed federal-court lawsuits seeking compensation from petitioner long-distance carriers. The District Court refused to dismiss the claims, finding that the aggregators had standing, and the D.C. Circuit ultimately affirmed.

Held: An assignee of a legal claim for money owed has standing to pursue that claim in federal court, even when the assignee has promised to remit the proceeds of the litigation to the assignor. Pp. 3-23.

(a) History and precedent show that, for centuries, courts have found ways to allow assignees to bring suit; where assignment is at issue, courts--both before and after the founding--have always permitted the party with legal title alone to bring suit; and there is a strong tradition specifically of suits by assignees for collection. And while precedents of this Court, Waite v. Santa Cruz, 184 U. S. 302 , Spiller v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co., 253 U. S. 117 , and Titus v. Wallick, 306 U. S. 282 , do not conclusively resolve the standing question here, they offer powerful support for the proposition that suits by assignees for collection have long been seen as "amenable" to resolution by the judicial process, Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83 . Pp. 3-16.

(b) Petitioners offer no convincing reason to depart from the historical tradition of suits by assignees, including assignees for collection. In any event, the aggregators satisfy the Article III standing requirements articulated in this Court's more modern decisions. Petitioners argue that the aggregators have not themselves suffered an injury and that assignments for collection do not transfer the payphone operators' injuries. But the operators assigned their claims lock, stock, and barrel, and precedent makes clear that an assignee can sue based on his assignor's injuries. Vermont Agency of Natural Resources v. United States ex rel. Stevens, 529 U. S. 765. In arguing that the aggregators cannot satisfy the redressability requirement because they will remit their recovery to the payphone operators, petitioners misconstrue the nature of the redressability inquiry, which focuses on whether the injury that a plaintiff alleges is likely to be redressed through the litigation--not on what the plaintiff ultimately intends to do with the money recovered. See, e.g., id., at 771. Petitioners' claim that the assignments constitute nothing more than a contract for legal services is overstated. There is an important distinction between simply hiring a lawyer and assigning a claim to a lawyer. The latter confers a property right (which creditors might attach); the former does not. Finally, as a practical matter, it would be particularly unwise to abandon history and precedent in resolving the question here, for any such ruling could be overcome by, e.g., rewriting the agreement to give the aggregator a tiny portion of the assigned claim itself, perhaps only a dollar or two. Pp. 16-20

(c) Petitioners' reasons for denying prudential standing--that the aggregators are seeking redress for third parties; that the litigation represents an effort by the aggregators and payphone operators to circumvent Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23's class-action requirements; and that practical problems could arise because the aggregators are suing, e.g., payphone operators may not comply with discovery requests orhonor judgments--are unpersuasive. And because there are no allegations that the assignments were made in bad faith and because the assignments were made for ordinary business purposes, any other prudential questions need not be considered here. Pp. 20-23.

489 F. 3d 1249, affirmed.

Breyer, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, and Ginsburg, JJ., joined. Roberts, C. J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, JJ., joined.

Petitioner Greenlaw was convicted of seven drug and firearms charges and was sentenced to imprisonment for 442 months. In calculating this sentence, the District Court made an error. Overlooking this Court's controlling decision in Deal v. United States, 508 U. S. 129 , interpreting 18 U. S. C. sec. 924(c)(1)(C)(i), and over the Government's objection, the District Court imposed a 10-year sentence on a count that carried a 25-year mandatory minimum term. Greenlaw appealed urging, inter alia, that the appropriate sentence for all his convictions was 15 years. The Government neither appealed nor cross-appealed. The Eighth Circuit found no merit in any of Greenlaw's arguments, but went on to consider whether his sentence was too low. The court acknowledged that the Government, while it had objected to the trial court's error at sentencing, had elected not to seek alteration of Greenlaw's sentence on appeal. Nonetheless, relying on the "plain-error rule" stated in Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b), the Court of Appeals ordered the District Court to enlarge Greenlaw's sentence by 15 years, yielding a total prison term of 662 months.

Held: Absent a Government appeal or cross-appeal, the Eighth Circuit could not, on its own initiative, order an increase in Greenlaw's sentence. Pp. 5-17.

(a) In both civil and criminal cases, in the first instance and on appeal, courts follow the principle of party presentation, i.e., the parties frame the issues for decision and the courts generally serve as neutral arbiters of matters the parties present. To the extent courts have approved departures from the party presentation principle in criminal cases, the justification has usually been to protect a pro se litigant's rights. See Castro v. United States, 540 U. S. 375 . The cross-appeal rule, pivotal in this case, is both informed by, and illustrative of, the party presentation principle. Under that rule, it takes a cross-appeal to justify a remedy in favor of an appellee. See McDonough v. Dannery, 3 Dall. 188. This Court has called the rule "inveterate and certain," Morley Constr. Co. v. Maryland Casualty Co., 300 U. S. 185 , and has in no case ordered an exception to it, El Paso Natural Gas Co. v. Neztsosie, 526 U. S. 473 . No exception is warranted here. Congress has specified that when a United States Attorney files a notice of appeal with respect to a criminal sentence, "[t]he Government may not further prosecute [the] appeal without the personal approval of the Attorney General, the Solicitor General, or a deputy solicitor general designated by the Solicitor General." 18 U. S. C. sec.3742(b). This provision gives the top representatives of the United States in litigation the prerogative to seek or forgo appellate correction of sentencing errors, however plain they may be. Pp. 5-8.

(b) The Eighth Circuit held that the plain-error rule, Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 52(b), authorized it to order the sentence enhancement sua sponte. Nothing in the text or history of Rule 52(b), or in this Court's decisions, suggests that the plain-error rule was meant to override the cross-appeal requirement. In every case in which correction of a plain error would result in modifying a judgment to the advantage of a party who did not seek this Court's review, the Court has invoked the cross-appeal rule to bar the correction. See, e.g., Chittenden v. Brewster, 2 Wall. 191; Strunk v. United States, 412 U. S. 434 . Even if it would be proper for an appeals court to initiate plain-error review in some cases, sentencing errors that the Government has refrained from pursuing would not fit the bill. In sec.3742(b), Congress assigned to leading Department of Justice officers responsibility for determining when Government pursuit of a sentencing appeal is in order. Rule 52(b) does not invite appellate court interference with the assessment of those officers. Pp. 8-10.

(c) Amicus curiae, invited by the Court to brief and argue the case in support of the Court of Appeals' judgment, links argument based on Rule 52(b) to similar argument based on 28 U. S. C. sec. 2106. For substantially the same reasons that Rule 52(b) does not override the cross-appeal rule, sec. 2106 does not do so either. P. 10.

(d) Amicus also argues that 18 U. S. C. sec. 3742, which governs appellate review of criminal sentences, overrides the cross-appeal rule for sentences "imposed in violation of law," sec. 3742(e). Amicus' construction of sec. 3742 is novel and complex, but ultimately unpersuasive. At the time sec. 3742 was enacted, the cross-appeal rule was a solidly grounded rule of appellate practice. Congress had crafted explicit exceptions to the cross-appeal rule in earlier statutes governing sentencing appeals, i.e., the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970 and the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. When Congress repealed those exceptions and enacted sec. 3742, it did not similarly express in the text of sec. 3742 any exception to the cross-appeal rule. This drafting history suggests that Congress was aware of the cross-appeal rule and framed sec. 3742 expecting that the new provision would operate in harmony with it. Pp. 10-13.

(e) In increasing Greenlaw's sentence sua sponte, the Eighth Circuit did not advert to the procedural rules setting firm deadlines for launching appeals and cross-appeals. See Fed. Rules App. Proc. 3(a)(1), 4(b)(1)(B)(ii), 4(b)(4), 26(b). The strict time limits on notices of appeal and cross-appeal serve, as the cross-appeal rule does, the interests of the parties and the legal system in fair warning and finality. The time limits would be undermined if an appeals court could modify a judgment in favor of a party who filed no notice of appeal. In a criminal prosecution, moreover, the defendant would appeal at his peril, with nothing to alert him that, on his own appeal, his sentence would be increased until the appeals court so decreed. Pp. 13-15.

(f) Nothing in this opinion requires courts to modify their current practice in "sentencing package cases" involving multicount indictments and a successful attack on some but not all of the counts of conviction. The appeals court, in such cases, may vacate the entire sentence on all counts so that the trial court can reconfigure the sentencing plan. On remand, trial courts have imposed a sentence on the remaining counts longer than the sentence originally imposed on those particular counts, but yielding an aggregate sentence no longer than the aggregate sentence initially imposed. This practice is not at odds with the cross-appeal rule, which stops appellate judges from adding years to a defendant's sentence on their own initiative. In any event, this is not a "sentencing package" case. Greenlaw was unsuccessful on all his appellate issues. The Eighth Circuit, therefore, had no occasion to vacate his sentence and no warrant, in the absence of a cross-appeal, to order the addition of 15 years to his sentence. Pp. 15-16.

481 F. 3d 601, vacated and remanded.

Ginsburg, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas, JJ., joined. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens, J., joined, and in which Breyer, J., joined as to Parts I, II, and III.

Texas police relied on erroneous information that petitioner Rothgery had a previous felony conviction to arrest him as a felon in possession of a firearm. The officers brought Rothgery before a magistrate judge, as required by state law, for a so-called "article 15.17 hearing," at which the Fourth Amendment probable-cause determination was made, bail was set, and Rothgery was formally apprised of the accusation against him. After the hearing, the magistrate judge committed Rothgery to jail, and he was released after posting a surety bond. Rothgery had no money for a lawyer and made several unheeded oral and written requests for appointed counsel. He was subsequently indicted and rearrested, his bail was increased, and he was jailed when he could not post the bail. Subsequently, Rothgery was assigned a lawyer, who assembled the paperwork that prompted the indictment's dismissal.

Rothgery then brought this 42 U. S. C. sec. 1983 action against respondent County, claiming that if it had provided him a lawyer within a reasonable time after the article 15.17 hearing, he would not have been indicted, rearrested, or jailed. He asserts that the County's unwritten policy of denying appointed counsel to indigent defendants out on bond until an indictment is entered violates his Sixth Amendment right to counsel. The District Court granted the County summary judgment, and the Fifth Circuit affirmed, considering itself bound by Circuit precedent to the effect that the right to counsel did not attach at the article 15.17 hearing because the relevant prosecutors were not aware of, or involved in, Rothgery's arrest or appearance at the hearing, and there was no indication that the officer at Rothgery's appearance had any power to commit the State to prosecute without a prosecutor's knowledge or involvement.

Held: A criminal defendant's initial appearance before a magistrate judge, where he learns the charge against him and his liberty is subject to restriction, marks the initiation of adversary judicial proceedings that trigger attachment of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel. Attachment does not also require that a prosecutor (as distinct from a police officer) be aware of that initial proceeding or involved in its conduct. Pp. 5-20.

(a) Texas's article 15.17 hearing marks the point of attachment, with the consequent state obligation to appoint counsel within a reasonable time once a request for assistance is made. This Court has twice held that the right to counsel attaches at the initial appearance before a judicial officer at which a defendant is told of the formal accusation against him and restrictions are imposed on his liberty. See Michigan v. Jackson, 475 U. S. 625 ; Brewer v. Williams, 430 U. S. 387 . Rothgery's hearing was an initial appearance: he was taken before a magistrate judge, informed of the formal accusation against him, and sent to jail until he posted bail. Thus, Brewer and Jackson control. Pp. 5-10.

(b) In McNeil v. Wisconsin, 501 U. S. 171 , the Court reaffirmed that "[t]he Sixth Amendment right to counsel attaches at the first formal proceeding against an accused," and observed that "in most States ... free counsel is made available at that time." That observation remains true today. The overwhelming consensus practice conforms to the rule that the first formal proceeding is the point of attachment. The Court is advised without contradiction that not only the Federal Government, including the District of Columbia, but 43 States take the first step toward appointing counsel before, at, or just after initial appearance. To the extent the remaining 7 States have been denying appointed counsel at that time, they are a distinct minority. Pp. 10-12.

(c) Neither the Fifth Circuit nor the County offers an acceptable justification for the minority practice. Pp. 12-19.

(1) The Fifth Circuit found the determining factor to be that no prosecutor was aware of Rothgery's article 15.17 hearing or involved in it. This prosecutorial awareness standard is wrong. Neither Brewer nor Jackson said a word about the prosecutor's involvement as a relevant fact, much less a controlling one. Those cases left no room for the factual enquiry the Circuit would require, and with good reason: an attachment rule that turned on determining the moment of a prosecutor's first involvement would be "wholly unworkable and impossible to administer," Escobedo v. Illinois, 378 U. S. 478 . The Fifth Circuit derived its rule from the statement, in Kirby v. Illinois, 406 U. S. 682 , that the right to counsel attaches when the government has "committed itself to prosecute." But what counts as such a commitment is an issue of federal law unaffected by allocations of power among state officials under state law, cf. Moran v. Burbine, 475 U. S. 412 , n. 3, and under the federal standard, an accusation filed with a judicial officer is sufficiently formal, and the government's commitment to prosecute it sufficiently concrete, when the accusation prompts arraignment and restrictions on the accused's liberty, see, e.g., Kirby, supra, at 689. Pp. 12-15.

(2) The County relies on United States v. Gouveia, 467 U. S. 180 , in arguing that in considering the initial appearance's significance, this Court must ignore prejudice to a defendant's pretrial liberty, it being the concern, not of the right to counsel, but of the speedy-trial right and the Fourth Amendment. But the County's suggestion that Fifth Amendment protections at the early stage obviate attachment of the Sixth Amendment right at initial appearance was refuted by Jackson, 475 U. S., at 629, n. 3. And since the Court is not asked to extend the right to counsel to a point earlier than formal judicial proceedings (as in Gouveia), but to defer it to those proceedings in which a prosecutor is involved, Gouveia does not speak to the question at issue. Pp. 15-17.

(3) The County's third tack gets it no further. Stipulating that the properly formulated test is whether the State has objectively committed itself to prosecute, the County says that prosecutorial involvement is but one form of evidence of such commitment and that others include (1) the filing of formal charges or the holding of an adversarial preliminary hearing to determine probable cause to file such charges, and (2) a court appearance following arrest on an indictment. Either version runs up against Brewer and Jackson: an initial appearance following a charge signifies a sufficient commitment to prosecute regardless of a prosecutor's participation, indictment, information, or what the County calls a "formal" complaint. The County's assertions that Brewer and Jackson are "vague" and thus of limited, if any, precedential value are wrong. Although the Court in those cases saw no need for lengthydisquisitions on the initial appearance's significance, that was because it found the attachment issue an easy one. See, e.g., Brewer, supra, at 399. Pp. 17-19.

491 F. 3d 293, vacated and remanded.

Souter, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Stevens, Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined. Roberts, C. J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Scalia, J., joined. Alito, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, J., joined. Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion.