PRELIMINARY PRINT 

## Volume 599 U. S. Part 1 **Pages 465–532** 

# OFFICIAL REPORTS

**OF** 

# THE SUPREME COURT

**June 22, 2023**

**REBECCA A. WOMELDORF reporter of decisions** 

NOTICE: This preliminary print is subject to formal revision before the bound volume is published. Users are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D.C. 20543, pio@supremecourt.gov, of any typographical or other formal errors.OCTOBER TERM, 2022 465 Syllabus
JONES v . HENDRIX, WARDEN
**certiorari to the united states court of appeals for**  **the eighth circuit** No. 21–857. Argued November 1, 2022—Decided June 22, 2023 In 2000, the District Court for the Western District of Missouri sentenced

petitioner Marcus DeAngelo Jones after he was convicted on two counts of unlawful possession of a frearm by a felon, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 922(g)(1), and one count of making false statements to acquire a fre

arm. The Eighth Circuit affrmed Jones' convictions and sentence. Jones then fled a motion pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 2255, which resulted in the vacatur of one of his concurrent § 922(g) sentences. Many years later, this Court held in Rehaif v. United States , 588 U. S. –––, that a defendant's knowledge of the status that disqualifes him from owning a frearm is an element of a § 922(g) conviction. Rehaif 's holding abro

gated contrary Eighth Circuit precedent applied by the courts in Jones' trial and direct appeal. Seeking to collaterally attack his remaining § 922(g) conviction based on Rehaif 's statutory holding, Jones fled a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U. S. C. § 2241 in the dis

trict of his imprisonment, the Eastern District of Arkansas. The Dis

trict Court dismissed Jones' habeas petition for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and the Eighth Circuit affrmed. Held : Section 2255(e) does not allow a prisoner asserting an intervening

change in interpretation of a criminal statute to circumvent the Antiter

rorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996's (AEDPA) restrictions on second or successive § 2255 motions by fling a § 2241 habeas petition. Pp. 471–492.

(a) Congress created § 2255 as a remedial vehicle by which federal prisoners could collaterally attack their sentences by motion in the sen

tencing court, rather than by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under § 2241 in the district of confnement. The “sole purpose” of § 2255 was to address the “serious administrative problems” created by district courts collaterally reviewing one another's proceedings without access to needed evidence and “aggravated” by the concentration of federal prisoners in certain judicial districts that therefore faced “an inordinate number of habeas corpus actions.” United States v. Hayman , 342 U. S. 205, 212–214, 219. To make this change effective, Congress generally barred federal prisoners “authorized” to fle a § 2255 motion from fling a petition under § 2241. But—in a provision of § 2255(e) now known as the saving clause—Congress preserved access to § 2241 in cases where466 JONES v. HENDRIX Syllabus “the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of [a prisoner's] detention.”

Congress later enacted AEDPA, which, as relevant here, barred sec

ond or successive § 2255 motions unless based on either “newly discov

ered evidence,” § 2255(h)(1), or “a new rule of constitutional law,” § 2255(h)(2). Some courts faced with AEDPA's second-or-successive re

strictions held that § 2255 was “inadequate and ineffective” under the saving clause when AEDPA's restrictions barred a prisoner from seek

ing relief based on a new interpretation of a criminal statute that circuit precedent had foreclosed at the time of the prisoner's trial, appeal, and frst § 2255 motion.

Section 2255(e)'s saving clause does not authorize that end-run around AEDPA. The clause preserves recourse to § 2241 in cases where un

usual circumstances make it impossible or impracticable to seek relief in the sentencing court, as well as for challenges to detention other than collateral attacks on a sentence. But § 2255(h) specifes the two limited conditions in which federal prisoners may bring second or successive collateral attacks on their sentences. The inability of a prisoner with a statutory claim to satisfy § 2255(h) does not mean that the prisoner may bring the claim in a § 2241 petition. Pp. 471–480.

(b) Jones and the United States each advance unpersuasive theories of when and why § 2255(h)'s exclusion of statutory claims sometimes renders § 2255 inadequate or ineffective for purposes of the saving clause. Pp. 480–492. (1) Jones argues that § 2255 is necessarily “inadequate or ineffec

tive to test” a prisoner's claim if the § 2255 court fails to apply the cor

rect substantive law. But the saving clause is concerned with the ade

quacy or effectiveness of the remedial vehicle (“the remedy by motion”), not any court's asserted errors of law. Next, Jones argues that courts of equity would afford relief from “inadequate” legal remedies in a broad range of circumstances; to the extent relevant to § 2255(e), this proves at most that a variety of practical obstacles might trigger the saving clause, cf. Hayman , 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23, not that the clause offers an exemption from AEDPA's limits on second or successive collateral at

tacks. Jones further argues that the saving clause's use of the present tense (“is inadequate or ineffective”) means that § 2241 is available whenever a prisoner is presently unable to fle a § 2255 motion. That argument would nullify AEDPA's limits on collateral relief.

Jones suggests that denying him the chance to raise his Rehaif claim in a § 2241 petition would violate the Suspension Clause, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 2. This argument fails because it would extend the writ of habeas corpus far beyond its scope when the Constitution was draftedCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 467 Syllabus and ratifed. Department of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam , 591 U
. S. –––, –––. When the Suspension Clause was adopted, Jones' Rehaif claim would not have been cognizable in habeas at all. At the founding, a sentence after conviction “by a court of competent jurisdiction” was “ `in itsel f sufficient cause' ” for a prisoner's continued detention. Brown v. Davenport , 596 U. S. –––, ––– (quoting Ex parte Watkins , 3 Pet. 193, 202). Of particular relevance here, a habeas court had no power to “look beyond the judgment” to “re-examine the charges on which it was rendered” for substantive errors of law—even “if . . . the [sentencing] court ha[d] misconstrued the law, and ha[d] pronounced an offence to be punishable criminally, which [was] not so.” Id. , at 202, 209. While Jones argues that pre-founding practice was otherwise, he fails to identify a single clear case of habeas being used to relitigate a conviction after trial by a court of general criminal jurisdiction.

The principles of Ex parte Watkins guided this Court's understanding of the habeas writ throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th. See Brown , 596 U. S., at –––, n. 1 (collecting cases). It was not until 1974, in Davis v. United States , 417 U. S. 333, that the Court held for the frst time that a substantive error of statutory law could be a cogni

zable ground for a collateral attack on a federal court's criminal judg

ment. See id. , at 342–347. The Suspension Clause neither constitu

tionalizes that innovation nor requires its extension to a second or successive collateral attack.

Jones' remaining constitutional arguments are no more persuasive. He argues that denying him a new opportunity for collateral review of his Rehaif claim threatens Congress' exclusive power to defne crimes, but a court does not usurp legislative power simply by misinterpreting the law in a given case. Next, Jones points to Fiore v. White , 531 U. S. 225 ( per curiam), which applied the rule that due process requires that the prosecution prove every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. But due process does not guarantee a direct appeal, McKane v. Durston , 153 U. S. 684, 687, let alone the opportunity to have legal issues redetermined in successive collateral attacks. Finally, the Eighth Amendment's constraint on the kinds of punishments governments may infict creates no independent entitlement to a second round of postcon

viction review. Pp. 480–488. (2) The Government asks the Court to adopt a novel interpretation of § 2255(e)'s saving clause based on an elaborate argument. Starting from the premise that the words “inadequate or ineffective” imply refer

ence to a “benchmark” of adequacy and effectiveness, the Government equates that benchmark with the types of claims cognizable in federal habeas petitions by state prisoners under the general habeas statutes.468 JONES v. HENDRIX Syllabus The Government ultimately concludes that § 2255(h) renders § 2255 “in

adequate or ineffective to test” a federal prisoner's statutory claim in cases where the prisoner has already fled one § 2255 motion and the claim otherwise satisfes pre-AEDPA habeas principles, which generally will require “a `colorable showing of factual innocence.' ” McCleskey v. Zant , 499 U. S. 467, 495 (quoting Kuhlmann v. Wilson , 477 U. S. 436, 454 (plurality opinion)).

The Court sees no indication that the saving clause adopts the Gov

ernment's state-prisoner-habeas benchmark. In any event, that bench

mark has uncertain relevance to the question presented here because federal habeas relief does not lie for errors of state law. The Govern

ment's theory ultimately rests instead on its assertion that § 2255(h) is simply not clear enough to support the inference that Congress entirely closed the door on pure statutory claims not brought in a federal prison

er's initial § 2255 motion. That assertion is unpersuasive.

The Government asserts that the Court must require “the clearest command” before construing AEDPA to “close [the] courthouse doors” on “a strong equitable claim” for relief. Holland v. Florida , 560 U. S. 631, 646, 649 (internal quotation marks omitted). But AEDPA's restric

tions embody Congress' policy judgment regarding the appropriate bal

ance between fnality and error correction. The Court declines to adopt a presumption against fnality. Further, the Court typically has found clear-statement rules appropriate when a statute implicates historically or constitutionally grounded norms that the Court would not expect Congress to unsettle lightly. See, e. g. , Alabama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Servs. , 594 U. S. –––, ––– ( per cu riam). As far as history and the Constitution are concerned, “there is nothing incongruous about a system in which this kind of error—the application of a since-rejected statutory interpretation—cannot be rem

edied after fnal judgment,” George v. McDonough , 596 U. S. –––, –––, and thus nothing fundamentally surprising about Congress declining to make such errors remediable in a second or successive collateral attack. Pp. 488–492. 8 F. 4th 683, affrmed.

**Thomas** , J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which **Roberts** , C. J., and **Alito** , **Gorsuch** , **Kavanaugh,** and **Barrett** , JJ., joined. **Soto mayor**  and **Kagan** , JJ., fled a dissenting opinion, post , p. 492. **Jack**

  ** son** , J., fled a dissenting opinion, post , p. 494. Daniel R. Ortiz argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs was Jeremy B. Lowery

.Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 469 Opinion of the Court Deputy Solicitor General Feigin argued the cause for re

spondent. With him on the briefs were Solicitor General Prelogar, Assistant Attorney General Polite , Sopan Joshi , and John M. Pellettieri

. Morgan L. Ratner, by invitation of the Court, 597 U. S. –––, argued the cause and fled a brief as amicus curiae in support of the judgment below

. With her on the brief was Judson O. Littleton. * **Justice Thomas** delivered the opinion of the Court. This case concerns the interplay between two statutes: 28 U. S. C. § 2241, the general habeas corpus statute, and § 2255, which provides an alternative postconviction remedy for fed

eral prisoners. Since 1948, Congress has provided that a federal prisoner who collaterally attacks his sentence ordi

narily must proceed by a motion in the sentencing court under § 2255, rather than by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under § 2241. To that end, § 2255(e) bars a federal prisoner from proceeding under § 2241 “unless . . . the [§ 2255] remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” Separately, since the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA), second or successive § 2255 motions are barred unless they rely on either “newly discov

ered evidence,” § 2255(h)(1), or “a new rule of constitutional law,” § 2255(h)(2). A federal prisoner may not, therefore, fle a second or successive § 2255 motion based solely on a

*Briefs of amici curiae urging reversal were fled for the National Asso

ciation of Criminal Defense Lawyers et al. by Jeffrey L. Fisher, Kendall Turner, David D. Cole , and Jennesa Calvo

- Friedman ; and for the Na

tional Association of Federal Defenders by Shelley Fite , Davina T. Chen , Devi M. Rao , Keith M. Donoghue , Joanna Munson Perales , Andrew L. Adler, Janice Bergmann , Joshua B. Carpenter, Brianna Mircheff , and Paresh Patel

.

Kent S. Scheidegger and Kymberlee C. Stapleton fled a brief of amicus curiae urging affrmance for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

Gregory Silbert fled a brief of amici curiae for Habeas Scholars.470 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court more favorable interpretation of statutory law adopted after h is conviction became fnal and his initial § 2255 motion was resolved. The question presented is whether that limitation on sec

ond or successive motions makes § 2255 “inadequate or inef

fective” such that the prisoner may proceed with his statu

tory claim under § 2241. We hold that it does not. I In 2000, the U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri convicted petitioner Marcus DeAngelo Jones of two counts of unlawful possession of a frearm by a felon, in violation of 18 U. S. C. § 922(g)(1), and one count of mak

ing false statements to acquire a frearm, in violation of § 922(a)(6). The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit af

frmed his convictions and sentence of 327 months' imprison

ment. See United States v. Jones , 266 F. 3d 804 (2001). After losing his appeal, Jones fled a timely § 2255 motion to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence, which resulted in the vacatur of one of his concurrent § 922(g) sentences but no other relief. See United States v. Jones , 403 F. 3d 604 (CA8 2005); United States v. Jones , 185 Fed. Appx. 541 (CA8 2006) ( per curiam). Years later, in Rehaif v. United States , 588 U. S. ––– (2019), this Court held that a defendant's knowledge of the status that disqualifes him from owning a frearm is an element of a § 922(g) conviction. In doing so, it abrogated the Eighth Circuit's contrary precedent, which the Western District of Missouri and the Eighth Circuit had applied in Jones' trial and direct appeal. See Jones , 266 F. 3d, at 810, n. 5. After Rehaif , Jones hoped to leverage its holding into a new collateral attack on his remaining § 922(g) conviction. But Rehaif 's statutory holding satisfed neither of § 2255(h)'s gateway conditions for a second or successive § 2255 motion: It was neither “newly discovered evidence,” § 2255(h)(1), nor “a new rule of constitutional law,” § 2255(h)(2) (emphasisCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 471 Opinion of the Court added). Unable to fle a new § 2255 motion in his sentencing court, Jones instead looked to § 2255(e)'s “saving clause,” which provides that a federal prisoner may fle a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under § 2241 if—and only if—§ 2255's “remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention.” Invoking this clause, Jones peti

tioned the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, the district where he was imprisoned, for a writ of habeas corpus under § 2241. The District Court dismissed Jones' habeas petition for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and the Eighth Circuit affrmed. 8 F. 4th 683 (2021). The Eighth Circuit rejected Jones' argument that the saving clause permits recourse to § 2241 to present a § 2255(h)-barred claim based on an inter

vening decision of statutory interpretation, as well as his argument that foreclosing relief on his Rehaif claim would violate the Suspension Clause, U. S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 2. In doing so, the Eighth Circuit deepened a split among the Courts of Appeals about whether prisoners in Jones' circum

stances may resort to § 2241 via the saving clause. We granted certiorari. 596 U. S. ––– (2022). The Solici

tor General then noticed her intent to defend the Eighth Circuit's judgment but not its rationale. We appointed Morgan Ratner as amicus curiae to argue in support of the Eighth Circuit's reasoning. 597 U. S. ––– (2022). She has ably dis

charged her responsibilities. II Consistent with the Eighth Circuit's reasoning, we hold that § 2255(e)'s saving clause does not permit a prisoner as

serting an intervening change in statutory interpretation to circumvent AEDPA's restrictions on second or successive § 2255 motions by fling a § 2241 petition. We begin by con

sidering the role of the saving clause in § 2255 prior to AEDPA's enactment. We then consider the impact of AEDPA on the statutory scheme.472 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court A In relevant part, § 2255 provides: “(a) A prisoner in custody under sentence of a court established by Act of Congress claiming the right to be released upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States, or that the court was without jurisdiction to im

pose such sentence, or that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law, or is otherwise sub

ject to collateral attack, may move the court which im

posed the sentence to vacate, set aside or correct the sentence.

. . . . . “(e) An application for a writ of habeas corpus in be

half of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to this section, shall not be enter

tained if it appears that the applicant has failed to apply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced him, or that such court has denied him relief, unless it also appears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or inef

fective to test the legality of his detention.” In understanding this statutory text, “a page of history is worth a volume of logic.” New York Trust Co. v. Eisner, 256 U. S. 345, 349 (1921). Section 2255 is an outgrowth of the historic habeas corpus powers of the federal courts as applied to the special case of federal prisoners. The First Judiciary Act authorized the federal courts “to grant writs of habeas corpus for the purpose of an inquiry into the cause of commitment,” with a proviso that such writs could “ex

tend to prisoners in gaol” only “where they [were] in custody, under or by colour of the authority of the United States, or [were] committed for trial before some court of the same, or [were] necessary to be brought into court to testify.” Act of Sept. 24, 1789, § 14, 1 Stat. 82. In 1867, Congress expanded the federal courts' habeas powers to cover “all cases whereCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 473 Opinion of the Court any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in viola

ti on of the constitution, or of any treaty or law of the United States.” Ch. 28, 14 Stat. 385. For most of our Nation's his

tory, a federal prisoner “claiming the right to be released,” § 2255(a), in a collateral attack on his sentence would have relied on these Acts and their successors. That changed with the 1948 recodifcation and reorganiza

tion of the Judiciary Code. See generally 62 Stat. 869. In enacting the present Title 28 of the United States Code, Con

gress largely recodifed the federal courts' pre-existing ha

beas authority in §§ 2241 and 2243, which, respectively, con

fer the power to grant the writ and direct the issuing court to “dispose of the matter as law and justice require.” Id. , at 964–965. At the same time, however, Congress created § 2255 as a separate remedial vehicle specifcally designed for federal prisoners' collateral attacks on their sentences. 1 Id. , at 967–968. The “sole purpose” of this innovation, as this Court ac

knowledged a few years later, “was to minimize the diff

culties encountered in habeas corpus hearings by affording the same rights in another and more convenient forum.” United States v. Hayman , 342 U. S. 205, 219 (1952); see also Davis v. United States , 417 U. S. 333, 343 (1974) (“[Section] 2255 was intended to afford federal prisoners a remedy iden

tical in scope to federal habeas corpus”); accord, United States v. Addonizio , 442 U. S. 178, 185 (1979); Hill v. United States , 368 U. S. 424, 427 (1962). Experience had shown that processing federal prisoners' collateral attacks on their sen

1 As frst enacted, § 2255 applied to any “prisoner in custody under sen

tence of a court of the United States.” 62 Stat. 967. In 1949, Congress substituted “court established by Act of Congress” for “court of the United States,” making no other changes. § 114, 63 Stat. 105 (internal quotation marks omitted). Section 2255 was not again amended until AEDPA, and the only post-AEDPA amendment simply added the current lettering and numbering to what were previously undesignated paragraphs. Court Se

curity Improvement Act of 2007, § 511, 121 Stat. 2545. For simplicity, we use § 2255's current internal designations throughout this opinion.474 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court tences through habeas proceedings—and, therefore, through the judicial districts in which they were confned—resulted in “serious administrative problems.” Hayman , 342 U. S., at 212. Most signifcantly, a federal prisoner's district of confnement was often far removed from the records of the sentencing court and other sources of needed evidence. Id. , at 212–213. These diffculties were “greatly aggravated” by the concentration of federal prisoners in a handful of judi

cial districts, which forced those District Courts to process “an inordinate number of habeas corpus actions.” Id. , at 213–214. Section 2255 solved these problems by rerouting federal prisoners' collateral attacks on their sentences to the courts that had sentenced them. To make this change of venue ef

fective, Congress generally barred federal prisoners “author

ized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to” § 2255 from applying “for a writ of habeas corpus” under § 2241. § 2255(e). But, in a provision that has come to be known as the saving clause, Congress preserved the habeas remedy in cases where “the remedy by motion is inadequate or ineffec

tive to test the legality of [a prisoner's] detention.” Ibid. Traditionally, courts have treated the saving clause as cov

ering unusual circumstances in which it is impossible or im

practicable for a prisoner to seek relief from the sentencing court. The clearest such circumstance is the sentencing court's dissolution; a motion in a court that no longer exists is obviously “inadequate or ineffective” for any purpose. See, e. g. , Witham v. United States , 355 F. 3d 501, 504–505 (CA6 2004) (fnding § 2255 inadequate or ineffective after court-martial was dissolved); Edwards v. United States , 1987 WL 7562, *1 (EDNY, Feb. 9, 1987) (fnding § 2255 inadequate or ineffective after District Court of the Canal Zone was dissolved); cf. Spaulding v. Taylor, 336 F. 2d 192, 193 (CA10 1964) (fnding § 2255 inadequate or ineffective after Alaska territorial court was dissolved and federal and state succes

sor courts declined § 2255 and state-habeas jurisdiction, re

Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 475 Opinion of the Court spectively). The saving clause might also apply when “it is not practicable for the prisoner to have his motion deter

mined in the trial court because of his inability to be present at the hearing, or for other reasons.” 2 Hayman , 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23 (internal quotation marks omitted). In addition, the saving clause ensures that § 2255(e) does not displace § 2241 when a prisoner challenges “the legality of his detention” without attacking the validity of his sen tence . To give a few examples, a prisoner might wish to argue that he is being detained in a place or manner not authorized by the sentence, that he has unlawfully been de

nied parole or good-time credits, or that an administrative sanction affecting the conditions of his detention is illegal. See generally Samak v. Warden, FCC Coleman–Medium , 766 F. 3d 1271, 1280 (CA11 2014) (Pryor, J., concurring) (ex

plaining that “[t]he `detention' of a prisoner encompasses much more than a criminal `sentence' ”). The briefs before us debate whether these types of challenges depend on the saving clause or proceed under § 2241 “directly.” Compare Brief for Petitioner 31 and Brief for Respondent 37–38 with Brief for Court-Appointed Amicus Curiae 17–18. It is dif

fcult to imagine a case in which this logical distinction would make any practical difference. That said, were it not for the saving clause, a literal reading of § 2255(e) might be thought

2 It bears mentioning that § 2255 was enacted “eight years before Presi

dent Eisenhower signed legislation funding the Interstate Highway Sys

tem.” Brief for Court-Appointed Amicus Curiae 17. At that time, it would not be surprising if removing a prisoner from the penitentiary, transporting him to the sentencing court for a hearing, and taking him back to prison again sometimes posed diffculties daunting enough to make a § 2255 proceeding practically unavailable. Cf. Stidham v. Swope , 82 F. Supp. 931, 932–933 (ND Cal. 1949) (describing the diffculty and delay involved in transporting a prisoner “upwards of 1,500 miles” from the fed

eral penitentiary in Alcatraz to the sentencing court in Missouri, a journey that “well could be two weeks” by rail). That this sort of practical inade

quacy would be highly unusual today should not blind us to the world in which Congress was legislating when it enacted the saving clause.476 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court to bar any “application for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a [federal] prisoner,” § 2255(e), whether or not it chal

lenged the “sentence . . . imposed,” § 2255(a). If nothing else, then, the saving clause guards against the danger that § 2255(e) might be construed to bar manner-of-detention challenges even though they are not within § 2255's substan

tive scope. B In 1996, Congress enacted AEDPA, which made signifcant reforms to the process of federal-court postconviction review for both state and federal prisoners. Most relevant here, AEDPA strictly limited “second or successive” § 2255 mo

tions to those that “contain— “(1) newly discovered evidence that, if proven and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be suffcient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfnder would have found the mov

ant guilty of the offense; or “(2) a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable.” § 2255(h). Importantly, AEDPA left the text of § 2255(e) unchanged. But AEDPA's new second-or-successive restrictions indi

rectly gave rise to a novel application of the saving clause. Mere months before AEDPA's enactment, this Court de

cided Bailey v. United States , 516 U. S. 137 (1995). That case interpreted the offense of “us[ing]” a frearm “during and in relation to any crime of violence or drug traffcking crime,” in violation of then-existing 18 U. S. C. § 924(c)(1), more narrowly than many Circuits' previous case law. See 516 U. S., at 142 (describing the Circuits' approaches). Under this Court's § 2255 precedent, Bailey's narrowing in

terpretation was grounds for a collateral attack by federal prisoners who had been convicted under the Courts of Ap

peals' broader interpretations. See Davis , 417 U. S., at 342–Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 477 Opinion of the Court 347 (holding a claim of legal error based on an intervening change in statutory interpretation cognizable under § 2255). Many prisoners with Bailey claims, however, had already ex

hausted their frst § 2255 motion, and Bailey's statutory hold

ing plainly did not satisfy either of § 2255(h)'s conditions for a second or successive motion. Several Courts of Appeals found a workaround for those prisoners in the saving clause. With minor differences in reasoning and wording, they held that § 2255 was “inade

quate and ineffective” under the saving clause—and that § 2241 was therefore available—when AEDPA's second-or

successive restrictions barred a prisoner from seeking relief based on a newly adopted narrowing interpretation of a criminal statute that circuit precedent had foreclosed at the time of the prisoner's trial, appeal, and frst § 2255 motion. This application of the saving clause took shape in In re Dor

sainvil , 119 F. 3d 245, 251 (CA3 1997); Triestman v. United States , 124 F. 3d 361, 378–380 (CA2 1997); and In re Daven

port , 147 F. 3d 605, 609–611 (CA7 1998), and it was later adopted by most of the other Circuits. See Ivy v. Pontesso , 328 F. 3d 1057, 1059–1060 (CA9 2003); Martin v. Perez , 319 F. 3d 799, 804–805 (CA6 2003); Reyes–Requena v. United States , 243 F. 3d 893, 904 (CA5 2001); In re Jones , 226 F. 3d 328, 333–334 (CA4 2000); Wofford v. Scott , 177 F. 3d 1236, 1242–1245 (CA11 1999), overruled by McCarthan v. Director of Goodwill Industries–Suncoast, Inc. , 851 F. 3d 1076 (CA11 2017) (en banc); but see Prost v. Anderson , 636 F. 3d 578, 584–595 (CA10 2011) (Gorsuch, J.) (holding that § 2255(e) does not permit recourse to § 2241 in these circumstances). We now hold that the saving clause does not authorize such an end-run around AEDPA. In § 2255(h), Congress enumerated two—and only two—conditions in which a sec

ond or successive § 2255 motion may proceed. Because § 2255 is the ordinary vehicle for a collateral attack on a fed

eral sentence, the straightforward negative inference from § 2255(h) is that a second or successive collateral attack on a478 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court federal sentence is not authorized unless one of those two conditi ons is satisfed. See Jennings v. Rodriguez , 583 U. S. –––, ––– (2018) (“ `The expression of one thing implies the exclusion of others' ” (quoting A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 107 (2012))). Even more directly, § 2255(h)(2)'s authorization of a successive col

lateral attack based on new rules “of constitutional law” im

plies that Congress did not authorize successive collateral attacks based on new rules of nonconstitutional law. Had Congress wished to omit the word “constitutional,” it easily could have done so. The saving clause does not undermine this strong negative inference. Basic principles of statutory interpretation re

quire that we construe the saving clause and § 2255(h) in har

mony, not set them at cross-purposes. See, e. g. , United States v. Fausto , 484 U. S. 439, 453 (1988); Bend v. Hoyt , 13 Pet. 263, 272 (1839) (Story, J.). That task is not diffcult given the distinct concerns of the two provisions. Subsec

tion (h) presumes—as part of its background—that federal prisoners' collateral attacks on their sentences are governed by § 2255, and it proceeds to specify when a second or succes

sive collateral attack is permitted. The saving clause has nothing to say about that question. Rather, like subsection (e) generally, it addresses the antecedent question of the re

lationship between §§ 2241 and 2255. After AEDPA, as before it, the saving clause preserves recourse to § 2241 in cases where unusual circumstances make it impossible or impracticable to seek relief in the sen

tencing court, as well as for challenges to detention other than collateral attacks on a sentence. Because AEDPA did not alter the text of § 2255(e), there is little reason to think that it altered the pre-existing division of labor between §§ 2241 and 2255. AEDPA's new restrictions on § 2255, therefore, are best understood as just that—restrictions on § 2255—not as expansions of § 2241's applicability.Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 479 Opinion of the CourtAny other reading would make AEDPA curiously selfdefeati ng. It would mean that, by expressly excluding sec

ond or successive § 2255 motions based on nonconstitutional legal developments, Congress accomplished nothing in terms of actually limiting such claims. Instead, it would have merely rerouted them from one remedial vehicle and venue to another. Stranger still, Congress would have provided “a superior remedy” for the very nonconstitutional claims it chose not to include in § 2255(h). McCarthan , 851 F. 3d, at1091. After escaping § 2255 through the saving clause, nonconstitutional claims would no longer be subject to AEDPA's other express procedural restrictions: the 1-year limitations period, see § 2255(f), and the requirement that a prisoner ob

tain a certifcate of appealability before appealing an adverse decision in the District Court, see § 2253(c)(1). 3 We gener

ally “resist attributing to Congress an intention to render a statute so internally inconsistent.” Greenlaw v. United States , 554 U. S. 237, 251 (2008). That resistance is particularly acute here, where allowing nonconstitutional claims to proceed under § 2241 would mean “resurrecting the very problems § 2255 was supposed to put to rest.” Wright v. Spaulding, 939 F. 3d 695, 707 (CA6 2019) (Thapar, J., concurring). Section 2255 owes its existence to Congress' pragmatic judgment that the sentencing court, not the District Court for the district of confnement, is the best venue for a federal prisoner's collateral attack on his sen

tence. Channeling a particular class of second or successive attacks back into § 2241 would mean once again “[c]oncen

3 It is no answer to say that the saving clause must apply sometimes and that these procedural restrictions are inapplicable whenever it does. Cf. Reply Brief for Petitioner 12; Reply Brief for Respondent 9–10. Allowing second or successive nonconstitutional claims to circumvent§ 2255(h) under the saving clause would confer favored treatment for nonconstitutional claims as a class , a result directly at odds with the manifest tenor of § 2255(h).480 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court trat[ing] `an inordinate number of habeas corpus actions' i n districts with large prison populations” and requiring District Courts “to review each other's proceedings—often without access to the witnesses, the sources of evidence, or other local information that may be critical.” Id. , at 707– 708 (quoting Hayman , 342 U. S., at 214). “The illogical re

sults of applying such an interpretation . . . argue strongly against the conclusion that Congress intended these results.” Western Air Lines, Inc. v. Board of Equalization of S. D. , 480 U. S. 123, 133 (1987). Here, as often is the case, the best interpretation is the straightforward one. Section 2255(h) specifes the two lim

ited conditions in which Congress has permitted federal pris

oners to bring second or successive collateral attacks on their sentences. The inability of a prisoner with a statutory claim to satisfy those conditions does not mean that he can bring his claim in a habeas petition under the saving clause. It means that he cannot bring it at all. Congress has chosen fnality over error correction in his case. III Resisting this reading, Jones and the United States both argue that § 2255(h)'s exclusion of statutory claims some

times renders § 2255 inadequate or ineffective, though they advance different theories of when and why it does so. Their arguments are unpersuasive. A Jones begins with a textual interpretation of the saving clause that, if accepted, would convert § 2255(e) into a license for unbounded error correction. He argues that § 2255 is necessarily “inadequate or ineffective to test” a prisoner's claim if the § 2255 court fails to apply the correct substantive law. This argument ignores that the saving clause is con

cerned with the adequacy or effectiveness of the remedial vehicle (“the remedy by motion”), not any court's assertedCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 481 Opinion of the Court errors of law. Cf. Swain v. Pressley , 430 U. S. 372, 383 (1977) ( holding a District of Columbia-court remedy modeled on § 2255 not to be “ `inadequate or ineffective' ” because the D. C. courts were “competent to decide all issues”). Even when “ circuit law is inadequate or defcient” because a Court of Appeals' precedents have resolved a legal issue incor

rectly, that is not a fault in “the § 2255 remedial vehicle” itself. 4 Prost , 636 F. 3d, at 590. Next, Jones offers a wide-ranging discussion of the concept of “inadequacy” as a term of art in traditional equity juris

prudence. While Jones demonstrates that courts of equity would afford relief from “inadequate” legal remedies in a broad range of circumstances, we fnd this excursus irrele

vant to the question presented here. To the extent that Congress' use of “inadequate” in the saving clause harkens back to equity's historic use of that term (an issue we need not address), the most Jones' evidence proves is that a vari

ety of circumstances might make it impracticable for a pris

oner to seek relief from the sentencing court . Cf. Hayman ,

4 Despite occasional gestures in its direction, and despite its critical role in persuading the Courts of Appeals to expand the saving clause, Jones' textual arguments place relatively little emphasis on whether binding precedent foreclosed a prisoner's statutory argument at trial, on appeal, and in an initial § 2255 motion. See In re Davenport , 147 F. 3d 605, 610– 611 (CA7 1998) (making such foreclosure an express precondition of saving-clause relief); see also Triestman v. United States , 124 F. 3d 361, 380 (CA2 1997) (emphasizing that the prisoner “had no [prior] effective opportunity to raise his [Bailey ] claim”); In re Dorsainvil , 119 F. 3d 245, 251 (CA3 1997) (similar). Rather, under Jones' interpretation of “test,” it appears that § 2241 would be available to correct any asserted error of law by a § 2255 court, even on an issue of frst impression. Untenable as that consequence is, the erroneous-foreclosure approach fares no better. To hold that binding precedent renders a judicial proceeding “ `inadequate or ineffective' to test the rights of parties” would be a shock for “our entire justice system,” in which “precedent is ubiquitous.” Wright v. Spaulding, 939 F. 3d 695, 709 (CA6 2019) (Thapar, J., concurring). Nothing in the text or history of the saving clause suggests that it uniquely embodies that far-reaching proposition.482 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23. Nothing in Jones' survey of equity jurisprudence, however, even begins to suggest that the sav

ing clause offers an exemption from AEDPA's clear limits on second or successive collateral attacks. Trying a different tack, Jones suggests that the saving clause's use of the present tense (“is inadequate or ineffec

tive”) means that § 2241 is available whenever a prisoner is presently unable to fle a § 2255 motion. Even the Circuits with an expansive view of the saving clause have uniformly rejected this argument, and for good reason. See, e. g. , In re Jones , 226 F. 3d, at 333; In re Dorsainvil , 119 F. 3d, at 251. Were this argument accepted, AEDPA's changes to § 2255 would be entirely futile, as § 2241 would be available any time the second-or-successive restrictions precluded relief. We decline to infer that Congress intended AEDPA's care

fully crafted limits on collateral relief under § 2255 to be mere nullities. As a backstop to his scattershot textual arguments, Jones invokes the constitutional-doubt canon, arguing that denying him the chance to raise his Rehaif claim in a § 2241 petition raises serious constitutional questions. It does not. 5 Jones' primary constitutional argument is that denying him any opportunity to seek postconviction relief based on Rehaif would violate the Suspension Clause, which provides that “[t]he Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” U. S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 2. This “Suspension Clause argument fails because it would extend the writ of habeas corpus far beyond its scope

5 As Court-appointed amicus curiae observes, Jones' use of the constitutional-doubt canon is somewhat anomalous, in that it aims at a different result from what a direct constitutional challenge would achieve. If a prisoner persuaded a court that the exclusion of statutory claims from § 2255(h) was unconstitutional, the result would not be that he could pro

ceed under § 2241, but simply that he could fle a second or successive § 2255 motion on an equal footing with §§ 2255(h)(1) and (2) claims.Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 483 Opinion of the Court `when the Constitution was drafted and ratifed.' ” Depart

men t of Homeland Security v. Thuraissigiam , 591 U. S. –––, ––– (2020) (quoting Boumediene v. Bush , 553 U. S. 723, 746 (2008)). When the Suspension Clause was adopted, and for a long time afterward, Jones' Rehaif claim would not have been cognizable in habeas at all. At the founding, a sentence after conviction “by a court of competent jurisdiction” was “ `in itself suffcient cause' ” for a prisoner's continued detention. Brown v. Davenport , 596 U. S. –––, ––– (2022) (quoting Ex parte Watkins , 3 Pet. 193, 202 (1830)). As Chief Justice Marshall explained in the sem

inal case of Ex parte Watkins , the criminal judgment, “in its nature, conclude[d] the subject on which it [was] rendered,” “pronounce[d] the law of the case,” and “pu[t] an end to the inquiry concerning fact.” Id. , at 202–203. Of particular relevance here, a habeas court had no power to “look beyond the judgment” to “re-examine the charges on which it was rendered” for substantive errors of law—even “if . . . the [sentencing] court ha[d] misconstrued the law, and ha[d] pro

nounced an offence to be punishable criminally, which [was] not so.” Id. , at 202, 209. In rebuttal, Jones argues that pre-founding practice did allow habeas courts to “look beyond the judgment” to ensure that the convicting court had proved every element of the crime for which a prisoner was committed. But Jones fails to identify a single clear case of habeas being used to reliti

gate a conviction after trial by a court of general criminal jurisdiction. Rather, the cases he cites mostly involve com

mitments by justices of the peace, 6 a distinction refected in Watkins itself. See id. , at 208 (discussing Ex parte Burford ,

6 See Rex v. Brown , 8 T. R. 26, 101 Eng. Rep. 1247 (1798); Rex v. Hall , 1 Cowp. 60, 98 Eng. Rep. 967 (1774); Rex v. Hall , 3 Burr. 1636, 97 Eng. Rep. 1022 (1765); Rex v. Collier, 1 Wils. K. B. 332, 95 Eng. Rep. 647 (1752). The cursory report in Rex v. Catherall , 2 Str. 900, 93 Eng. Rep. 967 (1730), is silent as to the authority under which the petitioner was convicted, and so cannot help Jones overcome Watkins

.484 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court 3 Cranch 448, 453 (1806), where the Court examined on ha

beas the suffciency of a warrant of commitment by justices of the peace while noting that no judgment of a federal court was in question). At common law, justices of the peace were not courts of record and did not possess general criminal jurisdiction. Capital Traction Co. v. Hof , 174 U. S. 1, 16–17 (1899); see also United States v. Mills , 11 App. D. C. 500, 507 (1897). As such, their commitments were “not placed on the same high ground with the judgments of a court of record,” and the fact that superior courts sometimes used habeas to examine commitments by such inferior magistrates furnishes “no authority for inquiring into the judgments of a court of general criminal jurisdiction.” Watkins , 3 Pet., at 209. Jones also appeals to Bushell's Case , Vaugh. 135, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006 (C. P. 1670), which has long been understood as a case about the independence of criminal juries in determin

ing questions of fact. Clark v. United States , 289 U. S. 1, 16–17 (1933); see also Sparf v. United States , 156 U. S. 51, 90–93 (1895); 1 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 375 (1883) (Stephen). There, a judge fned and imprisoned the members of a jury for acquitting William Penn and William Mead on indictments for “assembling un

lawfully and tumultuously,” a verdict ostensibly against the “manifest evidence.” Vaugh., at 137, 124 Eng. Rep., at 1007. A juror refused to pay the fne, applied to the Court of Com

mon Pleas for a writ of habeas corpus, and obtained dis

charge in an opinion by Chief Justice Vaughn. Jones points to one part of Vaughn's opinion, which criticized the return of the writ for not specifying that the jurors “kn[e]w and believe[d] th[e] evidence to be full and manifest against the indicted persons,” without which the jurors' verdict was “no cause of fne or imprisonment.” Id. , at 142, 124 Eng. Rep., at 1009. Jones asks us to read this passage as refecting a supposed common-law rule that habeas relief was available whenever a convicting court had not found the necessary mens rea of a crime. That reading, however, entirely missesCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 485 Opinion of the Court the actual basis of Vaughn's opinion, which was the judge's absolute want of power to question the jury's determination of the facts. See id. , at 149, 124 Eng. Rep., at 1013 (“It is absurd a jury should be fned by the Judge for going against their evidence, when he who fneth knows not what it is . . . . [I]f it be demanded, what is the fact? the Judge cannot an

swer it”); see also Stephen 375 (“[T]he judges who heard the argument . . . decided that the discretion of the jury to be

lieve the evidence or not could not be questioned”). Thus, Bushell's Case no more undermines Watkins than do the justice-of-the-peace cases. The principles of Watkins guided this Court's understand

ing of the habeas writ throughout the 19th century and well into the 20th. See Brown , 596 U. S., at –––, n. 1 (collecting cases); see also Johnson v. Zerbst , 304 U. S. 458, 465–466 (1938). Even in Ex parte Siebold , 100 U. S. 371 (1880), which held that the constitutionality of a prisoner's statute of conviction could be reviewed on habeas (as going to juris

diction), 7 the Court acknowledged Watkins and took pains to reconcile its holding with the traditional rule. See 100 U. S., at 375–377. And, when asked to review convicting courts' substantive errors of statutory law in habeas corpus pro

ceedings, this Court consistently held that it could not do so. 8

7 The Court seemingly abandoned that notion in Glasgow v. Moyer, 225 U. S. 420 (1912), which explained that “[t]he principle” that nonjurisdic

tional errors of substantive law are not cognizable in habeas “is not the less applicable because the law which was the foundation of the indictment and trial is asserted to be unconstitutional . . . . [I]f a court has jurisdic

tion of the case the writ of habeas corpus cannot be employed to re-try the issues, whether of law, constitutional or otherwise , or of fact.” Id. , at 429 (emphasis added).

8 See, e. g. , Knewel v. Egan , 268 U. S. 442, 446 (1925) (“It is fundamental that a court upon which is conferred jurisdiction to try an offense has jurisdiction to determine whether or not that offense is charged or proved”); In re Gregory , 219 U. S. 210, 213 (1911) (“[W]e are not concerned with the question whether the information was suffcient or whether the acts set forth in the agreed statement constituted a crime, that is to say, whether the court properly applied the law, if it be found that the court486 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court It was not until 1974, in Davis , that the Court broke with that tradition, holding for the frst time that a substantive error of statutory law could be a cognizable ground for a collateral attack on a federal court's criminal judgment. See 417 U. S., at 342–347. had jurisdiction to try the issues and to render the judgment”); In re Eckart , 166 U. S. 481, 483 (1897) (explaining that habeas would not offer relief from “a trial and conviction upon an indictment, the facts averred in which are asserted to be insuffcient to constitute an offence against the statute claimed to have been violated”); Ex parte Yarbrough , 110 U. S. 651, 654 (1884) (“Whether the indictment sets forth in comprehensive terms the offence which the statute describes and forbids . . . is in every case a question of law . . . within [the trial court's] jurisdiction”); Ex parte Parks , 93 U. S. 18, 20–21 (1876) (“It would be an assumption of authority for this court, by means of the writ of habeas corpus , to review every case in which the defendant attempts to controvert the criminality of the of

fence charged in the indictment”).

Ignoring this authority, **Justice Jackson**'s dissent cites a handful of inapposite cases to suggest that 19th-century American courts would have treated claims such as Jones' as cognizable in habeas. See post , at 524, n. 19, 526, 529–530, n. 25. Grant v. United States , 58 F. 694 (CA9 1893), was a case on a writ of error, not habeas corpus. Ex parte D'Olivera , 7 F. Cas. 853 (No. 3,967) (CC Mass. 1813), was another justice-of-the-peace case. Ex parte Randolph , 20 F. Cas. 242, 254 (No. 11,558) (CC Va. 1833), involved detention unsupported by any “judgment” or “judicial process” whatsoever. United States v. Bainbridge , 24 F. Cas. 946 (No. 14,497) (CC Mass. 1816), involved a collateral attack on a sentence imposed by a naval court martial; Justice Story's opinion turned on the validity of the petition

er's contract of enlistment, which, in turn, went to the court martial's jurisdiction. Id. , at 949–952; see also Ex parte Watkins , 3 Pet. 193, 209 (1830); Wise v. Withers , 3 Cranch 331, 337 (1806). Ex parte Bollman , 4 Cranch 75 (1807), relieved two alleged traitors from pretrial orders of commitment on the ground that there was “not suffcient evidence . . . to justify [their] commitment on the charge of treason.” Id. , at 135. Matter of Corryell , 22 Cal. 178 (1863), granted relief from a pretrial order of com

mitment after holding that the acts of which the petitioner stood accused did not constitute the charged crime. Id. , at 180, 183. (Incidentally, this use of habeas was not free from controversy. See, e. g. , In re Hacker, 73 F. 464, 465–469 (SD Cal. 1896); “In re Kearney,” The Writ of Habeas Corpus—Its Uses and Abuses, 5 Pac. Coast L. J. 549, 565–570 (1880).) Fi

nally, In re Wahll , 42 F. 822 (D. Minn. 1890), considered but rejected aCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 487 Opinion of the Court The Suspension Clause does not constitutionalize that in

novati on of nearly two centuries later. Nor, a fortiori , does it require the extension of that innovation to a second or successive collateral attack. Jones' remaining constitutional arguments are no more persuasive. He argues that denying him a new opportu

nity for collateral review of his Rehaif claim threatens separation-of-powers principles—specifcally, Congress' ex

clusive power to defne crimes. Cf. United States v. Hud

son , 7 Cranch 32, 34 (1812). But the authority to determine the facts and the law in an individual case, and to render a fnal, binding judgment based on those determinations, stands at the core of the judicial power. See Plaut v. Spend

thrift Farm, Inc. , 514 U. S. 211, 218–219 (1995); Watkins , 3 Pet., at 202–203. A court does not usurp legislative power simply by misinterpreting the law in a given case. See id. , at 206 (“If its judgment was erroneous, a point which this court does not determine, still it is a judgment”). Next, Jones points to Fiore v. White , 531 U. S. 225 (2001) ( per curiam), which applied the rule that due process re

quires that the prosecution prove every element of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. See id. , at 228–229. Whether a due process error has occurred at trial , however, is an en

tirely different issue from Congress' power to restrict collat

eral review. Due process does not guarantee a direct ap

peal, McKane v. Durston , 153 U. S. 684, 687 (1894), let alone the opportunity to have legal issues redetermined in succes

sive collateral attacks on a fnal sentence. Jones' last constitutional contention—that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments may entitle him to another round of collateral review—fails similar argument for ordering pretrial release. Id. , at 824–826. In sum, like Jones' pre-founding English cases, the dissent's 19th-century Ameri

can cases include no example in which a prisoner under sentence of a court of general criminal jurisdiction was permitted to relitigate the elements of his offense on habeas corpus.488 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court for a similar reason. By its terms, the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause expresses a substantive constraint on the kinds of punishments governments may “infic[t].” It creates no freestanding entitlement to a second or successive round of postconviction review, and thus it adds nothing to Jones' unavailing Suspension Clause argument. B The Government agrees with the Eighth Circuit that Jones is not entitled to relief, but, somewhat surprisingly, it asks us to adopt a novel, alternative interpretation of the saving clause, which it constructs via a roundabout argu

ment. It begins with the premise that the words “inade

quate or ineffective” imply reference to a “benchmark” of adequacy and effectiveness. It proceeds to identify that benchmark as the ability to test the types of claims cogniza

ble under the general habeas statutes—specifcally, those governing federal habeas petitions by state prisoners. The Government then reasons that § 2255(h)'s limitations on sec

ond or successive motions asserting newly discovered evi

dence or new rules of constitutional law do not trigger the saving clause because Congress has imposed analogous limi

tations on analogous claims by state prisoners and—by doing so—has redefned § 2255(e)'s implicit habeas benchmark with respect to such “factual” and “constitutional” claims. See 28 U. S. C. §§ 2244(b)(2)(A)–(B). Since, the Government as

serts, Congress has imposed no analogous limitation on stat

utory claims by state prisoners, it has not redefned the im

plicit habeas benchmark with respect to statutory claims like Jones'. And, we should be unwilling to infer that AEDPA limited such claims without a clearer textual indication. The Government concludes that § 2255(h) renders § 2255 “in

adequate or ineffective to test” a federal prisoner's statutory claim in cases where the prisoner has already fled one § 2255 motion and the claim otherwise satisfes pre-AEDPA habeas principles, which generally will require “a `colorable showingCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 489 Opinion of the Court of factual innocence.' ” McCleskey v. Zant , 499 U. S. 467, 495 (1991) (quoting Kuhlmann v. Wilson , 477 U. S. 436, 454 (1986) (plurality opinion)). 9 This elaborate theory is no more convincing than Jones' arguments. Its most striking faw is the seemingly arbi

trary linkage it posits between the saving clause and state prisoners' statutory postconviction remedies. While it is true that § 2255, as enacted, afforded the same rights federal prisoners previously enjoyed under the general habeas stat

utes, see Hayman , 342 U. S., at 219, nothing in § 2255's text, structure, or history suggests that Congress intended any part of it to implicitly cross-reference whatever modifcations to state prisoners' postconviction remedies might be made in the future. Understanding the saving clause to do so would

9 The Government also argues that Davis v. United States , 417 U. S. 333 (1974), and Sunal v. Large , 332 U. S. 174 (1947), read together, dictate that only an intervening decision of this Court, rather than a Court of Appeals, can work such a change in the law as to justify an otherwise-barred § 2241 petition. But this attempt to articulate an additional limiting principle for the Government's theory requires turning the cases inside out. In Davis , where this Court allowed a statutory claim to proceed under § 2255, the relevant narrowing decision came from the Ninth Circuit. See 417 U. S., at 341 (discussing United States v. Fox , 454 F. 2d 593 (CA9 1971)). In Sunal , where two petitioners' statutory claims were barred from pro

ceeding in habeas, it was this Court that had issued the relevant decision. See 332 U. S., at 176 (discussing Estep v. United States , 327 U. S. 114 (1946)). As we have recognized, see Reed v. Farley , 512 U. S. 339, 354 (1994), the holding of Sunal rested on what we would today call the peti

tioners' procedural default without cause: By not appealing their convic

tions, they had forfeited the argument that ended up prevailing in Estep , and they had shown no “exceptional circumstances which excuse[d] their failure” to appeal. 332 U. S., at 183–184. The Sunal Court thus had no occasion to defnitively resolve whether the petitioners' claims would have been cognizable in habeas but for their default. And, to the extent Sunal addressed that question in dicta, it appeared to be of two minds. See id. , at 181–183 (suggesting, in a single unelaborated sentence, that the petitioners' “cases would be quite different” had they appealed and lost, then spending two paragraphs emphasizing that the trial courts' “error of law” was neither jurisdictional nor constitutional).490 JONES v. HENDRIX Opinion of the Court have highly counterintuitive implications: On the Govern

ment's view, §§ 2255(h)(1) and (2) do not create an adequacy or effectiveness problem only because of the parallel stateprisoner provisions in § 2244(b). It seems to follow that if Congress relaxed § 2244(b)'s second-or-successive restric

tions for state prisoners tomorrow, and did nothing else, § 2255 would suddenly become “inadequate or ineffective to test” at least some second or successive fact-based claims that did not satisfy § 2255(h)(1) or constitutional claims that did not satisfy § 2255(h)(2), and that those claims would then be allowed to proceed under § 2241. We see no indication that the spare language of the saving clause creates such a Rube Goldberg contrivance, whereby changes to other statu

tory provisions (which do not apply to federal prisoners at all) could fow back into § 2255 and undermine § 2255(h). In any event, as the Government acknowledges, a state prisoner could never bring a pure statutory-error claim in federal habeas, because “ `federal habeas corpus relief does not lie for errors of state law.' ” Estelle v. McGuire , 502 U. S. 62, 67 (1991) (quoting Lewis v. Jeffers , 497 U. S. 764, 780 (1990)). As a result, it is unclear what work the Govern

ment's state-prisoner-habeas benchmark is even doing in its answer to the question presented here.Rather, the narrow base on which the Government's topheavy theory ultimately turns out to rest is its assertion that § 2255(h) is simply not clear enough to support the inference that Congress entirely closed the door on pure statutory claims not brought in a federal prisoner's initial § 2255 mo

tion. See Brief for Respondent 28–29, 39. That assertion is unpersuasive for the reasons we have already explained: § 2255(h) specifes the two circumstances in which a second or successive collateral attack on a federal sentence is avail

able, and those circumstances do not include an intervening change in statutory interpretation. The Government asserts that we require “the clearest command” before construing AEDPA to “close [the] court

-Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 491 Opinion of the Court house doors” on “a strong equitable claim” for relief. Hol

l and v. Florida , 560 U. S. 631, 646, 649 (2010) (internal quota

tion marks omitted). The only two cases the Government relies on for its clear-statement rule do not sweep as broadly as it suggests. In Holland , we applied the general pre

sumption of equitable tolling to AEDPA's 1-year statute of limitations for state prisoners' habeas claims. Id. , at 645– 649. Afterward, in McQuiggin v. Perkins , 569 U. S. 383 (2013), we held that “a convincing showing of actual inno

cence” could enable a prisoner to evade AEDPA's statute of limitations entirely. Id. , at 386. Undoubtedly, McQuiggin's assertion of equitable author

ity to override clear statutory text was a bold one. But even taking Holland and McQuiggin for all they are worth, there is a signifcant difference between reading equitable exceptions into a statute of limitations, on the one hand, and demanding a clear statement before foreclosing workarounds to AEDPA's second-or-successive restrictions, on the other. Statutes of limitations merely govern the timeframe for bringing a claim. AEDPA's second-or-successive restric

tions, by contrast, “constitute a modifed res judicata rule,” Felker v. Turpin , 518 U. S. 651, 664 (1996), and thus embody Congress' judgment regarding the central policy question of postconviction remedies—the appropriate balance between fnality and error correction. Insisting on a heightened standard of clarity in this context would effectively mean adopting a presumption against fnality as a substantive value. We decline to do so. “[T]he United States has an interest in the fnality of sentences imposed by its own courts,” Johnson v. United States , 544 U. S. 295, 309 (2005), and how to balance that interest against error correction is a “judgmen[t] about the proper scope of the writ” that is “ `normally for Congress to make.' ” Felker, 518 U. S., at 664 (quoting Lonchar v. Thomas , 517 U. S. 314, 323 (1996)).Accepting the Government's proposal to apply a clearstatement rule would be particularly anomalous in light of492 JONES v. HENDRIX **Sotomayor** and **Kagan, JJ.** , dissenting the precise question this case presents. Typically, we fnd clear-st atement rules appropriate when a statute implicates historically or constitutionally grounded norms that we would not expect Congress to unsettle lightly. See, e. g. , Al

abama Assn. of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Servs. , 594 U. S. –––, ––– (2021) ( per curiam) (pre

sumption that Congress does not casually assign executive agencies “powers of vast economic and political signifcance” or “signifcantly alter the balance between federal and state power” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Landgraf v. USI Film Products , 511 U. S. 244, 265–266 (1994) (presump

tion against statutory retroactivity); Atascadero State Hos

pital v. Scanlon , 473 U. S. 234, 243 (1985) (presumption against abrogation of state sovereign immunity). But, as shown above in discussing Jones' Suspension Clause argu

ment, there is no historical or constitutional norm of permit

ting one convicted of a crime by a court of competent juris

diction to collaterally attack his sentence based on an alleged error of substantive statutory law. As far as history and the Constitution are concerned, “there is nothing incongru

ous about a system in which this kind of error—the applica

tion of a since-rejected statutory interpretation—cannot be remedied after fnal judgment.” George v. McDonough , 596 U. S. –––, ––– (2022). A fortiori , there is nothing fundamen

tally surprising about Congress declining to make such er

rors remediable in a second or successive collateral attack. IV We affrm the judgment of the Court of Appeals. It is so ordered. **Justice Sotomayor** and **Justice Kagan** , dissenting. We respectfully dissent. As **Justice Jackson** explains, today's decision yields disturbing results. See post , at 516– 517 (dissenting opinion). A prisoner who is actually innocent,Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 493 **Sotomayor** and **Kagan, JJ.** , dissenting imprisoned for conduct that Congress did not criminalize, is forever barred by 28 U. S. C. § 2255(h) from raising that claim, merely because he previously sought postconviction relief. It does not matter that an intervening decision of this Court confrms his innocence. By challenging his con

viction once before, he forfeited his freedom. Though we agree with **Justice Jackson** that this is not the scheme Congress designed, we see the matter as the So

licitor General does. As all agree, Congress enacted § 2255 to “afford federal prisoners a remedy identical in scope to federal habeas corpus.” Davis v. United States , 417 U. S. 333, 343 (1974). To ensure that equivalence, Congress built in a saving clause, allowing recourse to habeas when the “remedy by motion” under § 2255 is “inadequate or ineffec

tive” compared to the remedy it replaced: an “application for a writ of habeas corpus.” § 2255(e). So, as this Court has explained, if § 2255 bars a claim cognizable at habeas, such that the remedies are not “commensurate,” the saving clause kicks in, and the prisoner may “proceed in federal ha

beas corpus.” Sanders v. United States , 373 U. S. 1, 14–15 (1963); see United States v. Hayman , 342 U. S. 205, 223 (1952). With that understanding in mind, consider a prisoner who, having already fled a motion for postconviction relief, dis

covers that a new decision of this Court establishes that his statute of conviction did not cover his conduct. He is out of luck under § 2255, because § 2255(h) will bar his claim. But that claim is cognizable at habeas, where we have long held that federal prisoners can collaterally attack their convic

tions in successive petitions if they can make a colorable showing that they are innocent under an intervening deci

sion of statutory construction. See Davis , 417 U. S., at 344– 347; McCleskey v. Zant , 499 U. S. 467, 493–495 (1991). Con

gress did not abrogate that principle in § 2255(h). Thus, we have precisely the kind of mismatch the saving clause was designed to address.494 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting In this case, the petitioner says he is that prisoner, with that mismatch. But the Court of Appeals never considered that question, laboring under a mistaken view of the sav

ing clause that, like the majority's, assigns it almost no role. Accordingly, we would remand for the lower courts to consider the petitioner's claim under the proper frame

work. See Cutter v. Wilkinson , 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005). **Justice Jackson** , dissenting. Today, the Court holds that an incarcerated individual who has already fled one postconviction petition cannot fle an

other one to assert a previously unavailable claim of statu

tory innocence. 1 The majority says that result follows from a “straightforward” reading of 28 U. S. C. § 2255. Ante , at 477, 480. But the majority reaches this preclusion decision by “negative inference.” Ante , at 477. And it is far from obvious that § 2255(h)'s bar on fling second or successive postconviction petitions (with certain notable exceptions) prevents a prisoner who has previously sought postconvic

tion relief from bringing a newly available legal innocence claim in court. See Part II, infra

. In any event, putting aside its questionable interpretation of § 2255(h), the majority is also wrong to interpret § 2255(e)—known as the saving clause—as if Congress de

signed that provision to filter potential habeas claims through the narrowest of apertures, saving essentially only those that a court literally would be unable to consider due to something akin to a natural calamity. See Part I, infra

. This stingy characterization does not refect a primary aim of § 2255(e), which was to “save” any claim that was available prior to § 2255(h)'s enactment where Congress has not ex

1 I use the terms “statutory innocence” and “legal innocence” in this opinion interchangeably. Both refer to a situation where an individual was convicted under a statute that, properly interpreted, did not reach his conduct.Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 495 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting pressed a clear intent to foreclose it. Jones's legal innocence clai m fts that mold. I am also deeply troubled by the constitutional implica

tions of the nothing-to-see-here approach that the majority takes with respect to the incarceration of potential legal in

nocents. See Part III, infra . Apparently, legally innocent or not, Jones must just carry on in prison regardless, since (as the majority reads § 2255) no path exists for him to ask a federal judge to consider his innocence assertion. But for

ever slamming the courtroom doors to a possibly innocent person who has never had a meaningful opportunity to get a new and retroactively applicable claim for release reviewed on the merits raises serious constitutional concerns. Thus, in my view, all roads lead to an interpretation of § 2255 that is diametrically opposed to the one that the ma

jority announces. Whether one gets there by virtue of a proper reading of § 2255(e) or an informed understanding of § 2255(h), or by affording due respect to the core constitu

tional interests at stake, Jones's successive petition alleging legal innocence should have been considered on the merits. 2 Therefore, I respectfully dissent. I Section 2255(e) saves postconviction claims by authorizing the fling of a habeas petition under § 2241 if the procedures § 2255 affords are “inadequate or ineffective to test the legal

ity of [a prisoner's] detention.” § 2255(e). I see no reason why the only circumstance in which § 2255's procedures qual

ify as inadequate or ineffective for saving clause purposes is when it is impossible or impractical for a prisoner to fle a § 2255 motion. Contra, ante , at 474–475. Quite to the con

trary, the enactment history of § 2255 plainly establishes that Congress wanted to ensure that a prisoner's claim was

2 I take no position as to whether Jones's legal innocence claim is actually meritorious. This case is about whether § 2255 should be interpreted to prevent him from bringing the claim to a court in the frst place.496 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting “saved” in at least one additional set of circumstances: Where the prisoner would have been able to bring such a claim prior to the enactment of § 2255 (or any subsequent changes, like those made by the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)), but somehow cannot bring that claim after a change to the statutory framework (unless Congress has clearly expressed its intent to restrict the scope of relief in that regard). As the majority has in

terpreted § 2255(h), that is precisely the situation here. A To understand why Congress meant for Jones to be able to invoke the saving clause and bring his statutory innocence claim in a habeas petition fled under § 2241, a frm grasp of the text, history, and intended operation of § 2255(e) is required. 1 The saving clause is the latter part of § 2255(e), which states in full: “An application for a writ of habeas corpus [o]n behalf of a prisoner who is authorized to apply for relief by motion pursuant to this section, shall not be entertained if it appears that the applicant has failed to apply for relief, by motion, to the court which sentenced him, or that such court has denied him relief, unless it also ap

pears that the remedy by motion is inadequate or inef

fective to test the legality of his detention .” § 2255(e) (emphasis added); see also § 2255 (1946 ed., Supp. II) (§ 2255 (1948)). Before § 2255 was enacted in 1948, federal prisoners collater

ally attacked their convictions by fling a habeas petition. See United States v. Hayman , 342 U. S. 205, 210–213 (1952). Such petitions sought judicial review of the legality of the individual's detention, and were fled in the district where the person was incarcerated. Ibid. This led to some prob

Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 497 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting lems: Districts that housed large federal prisons were dis

proportionately burdened with habeas petitions. Id. , at 213–214. Also, in many cases, the court deciding the peti

tion was both unfamiliar with the underlying facts and far away from the relevant record, evidence, and witnesses. Ibid. Congress created § 2255—an entirely new process for fed

eral prisoners to use when seeking postconviction judicial review—to solve these practical problems. Ante , at 473– 474. Under the procedures laid out in § 2255, in lieu of fling a traditional habeas petition, federal prisoners must fle a § 2255 motion. And any such motion is to be fled in the sentencing court, not in the district of confinement. § 2255(a) (2018 ed.); see Hayman , 342 U. S., at 219. Congress crafted (what is now) § 2255(e) to ensure that the new § 2255 procedure successfully ousted the outdated ha

beas regime it replaced. Per the frst part of that provision, as a general matter, § 2255 becomes the exclusive procedure by which federal prisoners can collaterally attack their con

victions. See § 2255(e) (providing that “[a]n application for a writ of habeas corpus . . . shall not be entertained” where, in essence, the prisoner fails to bring an authorized § 2255 motion, or does so and is denied relief). Yet Congress also specifed that, in a circumstance in which § 2255 is “inade

quate or ineffective to test the legality of his detention,” an individual could still fle a habeas petition. Ibid. There are multiple ways in which § 2255 might be “insuf

fcient” or “[n]ot capable of performing the required work” of postconviction review of federal convictions. Webster's New International Dictionary 1254, 1271 (2d ed. 1934) (defn

ing “inadequate” and “ineffective” in this manner); see also Funk & Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary of the English Language 1239, 1255 (1942) (similar). For example, § 2255 would not be up to the task if it would be impossible or im

practicable for a federal prisoner to fle a § 2255 petition. Ante , at 474, 479.498 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting The case before us involves another way that § 2255 can be i nadequate or ineffective—where the newly created § 2255 procedure, perhaps inadvertently, blocks a prisoner from bringing a claim that was previously cognizable in habeas. This is an inadequacy concerning the operation of § 2255 from Congress's perspective, because the “sole purpose” of § 2255 “was to minimize the diffculties encountered in habeas cor

pus hearings” while still “affording the same rights in an

other and more convenient forum.” Hayman , 342 U. S., at 219 (emphasis added); see also Davis v. United States , 417 U. S. 333, 343 (1974) (“Th[e] history makes clear that § 2255 was intended to afford federal prisoners a remedy identical in scope to federal habeas corpus” (emphasis added)); Sand

ers v. United States , 373 U. S. 1, 14 (1963) (“[I]t conclusively appears from the historic context in which § 2255 was enacted that the legislation was intended simply to provide in the sentencing court a remedy exactly commensurate with that which had previously been available by habeas cor

pus” (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted)). That much is not in dispute—the majority acknowledges that Congress intended to maintain equivalence with the claims available in habeas when it enacted § 2255. See ante , 473–474. Consequently, in any circumstance in which thenew § 2255 procedure actually operates to foreclose a postconviction claim that a prisoner could have brought pre

viously in a habeas petition, the § 2255 process is patently inadequate to accomplish Congress's aim of allowing prison

ers to test the legality of their detention under § 2255 to the same extent as they could have in the habeas regime that § 2255 replaced. Thus, the saving clause can be properly interpreted as ef

fectuating Congress's intent in this regard. As the Govern

ment persuasively argues, by inserting a provision that allows prisoners to still fle habeas petitions, Congress “en

sure[d] that Section 2255 does not disadvantage federal pris

oners as compared to habeas.” Brief for Respondent 17; seeCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 499 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting also Boumediene v. Bush , 553 U. S. 723, 776 (2008) (noting that the purpose of § 2255 was “to strengthen, rather than dilute, the writ's protections” and further recognizing that the saving clause served that purpose). That is, where a federal prisoner could have brought a particular habeas claim prior to 1948, but could not bring such a claim in a § 2255 petition after that date, the saving clause kicks in to permit that individual to resort to habeas to raise that claim. This reading of § 2255(e) means that the saving clause op

erates (at the very least, and as it was enacted in 1948) to preserve from inadvertent extinguishment postconviction claims that would have been previously cognizable for fed

eral prisoners but cannot be brought by operation of § 2255. And the fip side of that interpretation—that § 2255 is inade

quate or ineffective if it sub silentio extinguishes previously available habeas claims, triggering the saving clause—inexo

rably follows. This interpretation tracks Congress's clear claim-preservation goal. And, as an added bonus, it also has the beneft of being in accordance with how saving clauses usually work. See 2 J. Sutherland, Statutory Construction § 4830, pp. 376–377 (3d ed. 1943) (defning “saving clause” as a provision “said to preserve from destruction certain rights, remedies or privileges which would otherwise be destroyed by the general enactment”); see, e. g. , Andrus v. Shell Oil Co. , 446 U. S. 657, 666 (1980) (noting that Congress included a “savings clause” in the statute at issue to “preserv[e] pre

existing claims”); United States v. Menasche , 348 U. S. 528, 535 (1955) (noting that the purpose of a saving clause in the immigration context was to “manifes[t] a well-established congressional policy not to strip [noncitizens] of advantages gained under prior laws”). 2 Fast forward to 1996: Congress reenacted the saving clause—using identical language—when it passed AEDPA. § 2255(e); § 2255 (1948). Thus, because the saving clause op

500 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting erated in 1948 to “save” from inadvertent extinguishment habeas claims that were available before the enactment of § 2255, the same was true when Congress revised those pro

cedures in the mid-1990s, while keeping the saving clause intact. In other words, both in 1948 and to this day, the saving clause operates to (among other things) ensure that § 2255—or the AEDPA amendments—did not, through inapt language, substantively alter the scope of available postcon

viction relief for federal prisoners. This is not to say that Congress necessarily carried for

ward all of its previous policy determinations with respect to the availability of postconviction claims, or that it did not change its mind at all about the appropriate dimensions of postconviction relief. Indeed, habeas is a dynamic remedy, and congressional enactments contribute to its evolution. See Felker v. Turpin , 518 U. S. 651, 664 (1996); see also 2 R. Hertz & J. Liebman, Federal Habeas Corpus Practice and Procedure § 28.4[a], p. 1738 (7th ed. 2020) (Hertz & Liebman) (“Anglo-American law . . . has imposed an evolving set of restrictions on second and subsequent petitions”). But, again, the saving clause—which served an important equaliz

ing function—remained intact when Congress reenacted § 2255 in 1996. Thus, while Congress can certainly act to change the scope of habeas or its statutory equivalent if it wants to do so, in order to overcome the operation of the saving clause (which, again, was inserted to maintain equiva

lence in the absence of intent to make a change), Congress has to make said change to the availability of postconviction relief deliberately and clearly, thereby unequivocally ex

pressing its intent to do so. See Holland v. Florida , 560 U. S. 631, 646 (2010); infra , at 518–521. All this means that today (as in 1948) the saving clause is best interpreted as allowing for the fling of a habeas petition under § 2241 where a claim that was cognizable prior to AEDPA cannot be brought under § 2255, unless Congress has clearly expressed its intent to foreclose that particular claim.Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 501 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting B That brings us to the situation at issue here. When Con

gress amended § 2255 by enacting AEDPA, it legislated against a legal background in which a federal prisoner could bring a statutory innocence claim in a § 2255 petition. The majority does not dispute this. See ante , at 485–486. Nor could it, because this Court made crystal clear in 1974 in Davis that statutory innocence claims are legally cognizable in a § 2255 motion. 417 U. S., at 343–347. 3 Moreover, prior to AEDPA's enactment, a federal prisoner could bring such a postconviction claim of statutory inno

cence in a successive petition . This Court had generally restricted successive postconviction flings by the 1990s, but a prisoner who had previously fled at least one petition could still fle another one in order to assert innocence. That was because any bar to the fling of a successive petition was typically lifted if enforcing that bar would result in a “mis

carriage of justice.” McCleskey v. Zant , 499 U. S. 467, 494– 495 (1991); Hertz & Liebman § 28.4[g], at 1757; see Brief for Respondent 22–24. And under our settled precedent, legal innocence claims ft that category. See Davis , 417 U. S., at 346 (“There can be no room for doubt” that “conviction and punishment . . . for an act that the law does not make crimi

nal” “ `inherently results in a complete miscarriage of jus

tice' ”); see also Bousley v. United States , 523 U. S. 614, 623–624 (1998). These background principles relate to the successive peti

tion that Jones seeks to bring here as follows. If the major

ity is right that (by virtue of § 2255(h)) prisoners like Jones

3 In this regard, Davis merely acknowledged what had been true since the founding. See infra , at 523–527; Davis v. United States , 417 U. S. 333, 343–345 (1974); see also L. Litman, Legal Innocence and Federal Ha

beas, 104 Va. L. Rev. 417, 488, n. 334 (2018) (“[A]t the time Section 2255 was enacted, federal prisoners could raise a claim, in successive petitions, that they were mistakenly convicted or sentenced because of an error of statutory interpretation”).502 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting are now unable to bring a successive § 2255 petition to make the same kind of legal innocence claim that they could have brought prior to AEDPA, then Congress's enactment of § 2255(h) has dramatically altered the legal landscape in a manner that seems, at best, inconsistent with its original in

tent. To repeat: The saving clause expresses a congres

sional intent to maintain equivalence between what a pris

oner could claim before and after § 2255(h); yet under the majority's reading, § 2255(h)'s “second or successive” bar would effectively operate to preclude successive legal inno

cence claims—shrinking the universe of previously available claims—the opposite of what Congress set out to do when it set up § 2255. In my view, that is where the saving clause comes in. Reading the saving clause to perform its normal, intended function of “saving” previously available claims solves this problem, because it allows prisoners who could have brought a claim prior to the enactment of AEDPA (like Jones) to fle a habeas petition to the extent that § 2255 now precludes such a fling under that particular statutory mechanism. Thus, interpreting § 2255(e)'s “inadequate and ineffective” language to permit the fling of a habeas petition that raises a legal innocence claim in these circumstances seems per

fectly consistent with Congress's intent. This understanding of the saving clause also explains the clause's application—or, more precisely, its inapplicability— to the types of claims specifcally mentioned in §§ 2255(h)(1) and (2). Congress has expressly overridden operation of the saving clause with respect to those two provisions, because it has clearly expressed its intent to narrow the scope of postconviction relief where a federal prisoner brings a suc

cessive petition raising a claim of new evidence or new constitutional law. 4 “A legislature may adopt a policy dif

4 Prior to AEDPA, an individual who wished to fle a successive petition claiming factual innocence on the basis of new evidence needed only toCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 503 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting ferent from that embodied in the general saving statute.” M. Ruud, The Savings Clause—Some Problems in Construc

tion and Drafting, 33 Texas L. Rev. 285, 299 (1955). And here, no one questions that, with §§ 2255(h)(1) and (2), Con

gress clearly did so. Brief for Respondent 26–28. But the majority now reasons that, merely by omitting statutory in

nocence claims from that authorized-flings list, Congress should be deemed to have exhibited a narrowing intent with respect to those claims as well. See ante , at 469–470, 480. I disagree. Indeed, in my view, it is precisely because the text of §§ 2255(h)(1) and (2) speaks unequivocally to the nar

rowing Congress wished to effect with respect to newevidence and new-constitutional claims that we should not ascertain that Congress meant for the second or successive bar to have the same effect with respect to legal innocence claims—which, importantly, the statute does not mention. To put it bluntly: Congress knows how to speak clearly when it wants to disrupt the continuity of claims that are available to prisoners before and after it enacts legislation that ad

dresses postconviction review procedures. And rather than providing any such clear statement as to how an interven

ing claim of statutory innocence should be treated vis-à-vis show that it was “more likely than not” that the jury would have acquitted him. Schlup v. Delo , 513 U. S. 298, 327 (1995). But, with AEDPA, Con

gress narrowed the scope of available relief for factual innocence claims by requiring prisoners to make their showing by the more stringent “clear and convincing evidence” standard. § 2255(h)(1); see also § 2244(b)(2) (B)(ii); 141 Cong. Rec. 15040, 15042 (1995) (statement of Sen. Levin). Similarly, before AEDPA, an intervening change of circuit precedent ar

guably could warrant a successive petition raising a new constitutional argument. See Davis , 417 U. S., at 339–341, 346–347; Sanders v. United States , 373 U. S. 1, 17 (1963); United States v. Nolan , 571 F. 2d 528, 530 (CA10 1978); see also Hertz & Liebman § 28.3[c][ii], at 1709–1710, and n. 108. Yet AEDPA permits successive petitions raising new constitu

tional claims only when premised on retroactive Supreme Court opinions. §§ 2255(h)(2), 2244(b)(2)(A).504 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting § 2255(h)'s second or successive bar, Congress was conspicu

ously silent. 5 C The majority advances an entirely different theory of the work that § 2255(e) does with respect to the postconviction review scheme—a theory that I do not fnd even remotely persuasive. Opting for the narrowest possible view of Con

gress's intent regarding the saving clause, the majority gen

erally claims that the saving clause only authorizes the fling of a habeas petition if fling a § 2255 motion would be “im

possible or impracticable.” Ante , at 477, 478. And in the majority's telling, that circumstance only occurs, say, if the courthouse where a § 2255 motion would have otherwise been fled has burned to the ground or been carried away by a mudslide. The majority's parsimonious perspective on the meaning of “inadequate or ineffective” is fawed in many respects. First and foremost, it is entirely atextual. The majority cites exactly zero dictionary defnitions of the terms “inade

quate” or “ineffective.” And while it does reference an ear

lier draft of the legislation that became § 2255, ante , at 475 (quoting Hayman , 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23), it fails to mention

5 The text of § 2255(h) says nothing about legal innocence claims,let alone clearly expresses an intent to narrow the scope of available postconviction relief for that category of claims, in contrast to what the statute says about claims of new evidence or new constitutional rules. Congress could have easily stated somewhere in § 2255(h) or § 2244 that “no circuit or district judge shall be required to consider a second or successive mo

tion premised only on statutory claims, even claims suggesting innocence,” or that “a court of appeals shall not certify or authorize a second or succes

sive § 2255 petition that raises a statutory claim only.” Yet nothing close to this kind of language, or distinction, appears on the face of the statute. Nor does an intent to foreclose statutory innocence claims appear in the legislative history of § 2255(h), even though that history does clearly refect a congressional intent to narrow the scope of postconviction relief for the categories expressly mentioned in §§ 2255(h)(1) and (2) (like new evidence claims), see, e. g. , 141 Cong. Rec., at 15040, 15042 (statement of Sen. Levin).Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 505 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting that Congress specifcally rejected language that embraced the majority's “impracticable only” proposition. See Hayman , 342 U. S., at 215, n. 23; In re Dorsainvil , 119 F. 3d 245, 250 (CA3 1997). Furthermore, while the majority opinion accurately re

cites the history and purpose of § 2255, see ante , at 473–474, it ignores the import of that history. As explained above, when Congress enacted § 2255 in 1948, it intended to ensure equivalence between traditional habeas and the new § 2255 mechanism for postconviction review. Supra , at 498. Ac

cordingly, Congress inserted the saving clause to ensure that certain pre-existing postconviction claims (say, a claim of statutory innocence) could still be heard even if the statutory language Congress was adopting inadvertently barred them. Supra , at 496–499. And Congress preserved the language of § 2255(e)—the language that performs the equalizing func

tion—in 1996, even as it made other signifcant changes to § 2255. Supra , at 499–500. Ignoring all this, the majority grounds its analysis of § 2255(e) in a scattershot of lower court cases that the major

ity claims “[t]raditionally” viewed the saving clause as solv

ing only for practical fling problems. Ante , at 474–475. To be sure, a handful of lower courts applied the saving clause where the sentencing court was dissolved. Ibid. But lower courts have also “[t]raditionally,” ante , at 474, treated the saving clause as permitting individuals with previously unavailable statutory innocence claims to fle habeas peti

tions in light of § 2255(h)'s successive-petition bar. Prost v. Anderson , 636 F. 3d 578, 605 (CA10 2011) (Seymour, J., con

curring in part and dissenting in part). 6 The majority also

6 See also, e. g. , Triestman v. United States , 124 F. 3d 361, 363 (CA2 1997); In re Dorsainvil , 119 F. 3d 245, 250–252 (CA3 1997); In re Jones , 226 F. 3d 328, 333–334 (CA4 2000); Reyes-Requena v. United States , 243 F. 3d 893, 904 (CA5 2011); Hill v. Masters , 836 F. 3d 591, 599–600 (CA6 2016); In re Davenport , 147 F. 3d 605, 610–611 (CA7 1998); Stephens v. Herrera , 464 F. 3d 895, 898 (CA9 2006); Wofford v. Scott , 177 F. 3d 1236,506 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting fails to grapple with this Court's own opinions that suggest a broader interpretation of the saving clause is proper. See Swain v. Pressley , 430 U. S. 372, 381–382 (1977); Sanders , 373 U. S., at 14–15; Hayman , 342 U. S., at 223; Brief for Respond

ent 17–18. It appears the majority's interpretation of § 2255(e) is pri

marily attributable to its concern that interpreting the sav

ing clause to permit Jones to fle a habeas petition might authorize an “end-run” around § 2255's procedures. Ante , at 477–478, 482. I think those fears are vastly overblown. Properly interpreted, a § 2255 motion is only “inadequate or ineffective” when the potential procedural bar does not provide a prisoner with any meaningful opportunity to pres

ent a claim. And that circumstance does not exist any time a procedural limitation in § 2255 screens out a claim. For example, if an individual does not raise his legal innocence claim in a § 2255 motion in a timely fashion, see § 2255(f), he cannot resort to the saving clause to fle a habeas petition; that individual did have a meaningful opportunity to raise his claim pursuant to the § 2255 process, but missed the win

dow of opportunity. Similarly, where Congress has clearly narrowed the scope of postconviction relief—as it has done for claims of new evidence and new constitutional rules— it has overridden the equivalence aim that would otherwise render § 2255 inadequate or ineffective, such that the saving clause does not apply. On top of this, given the congruence purpose underlying § 2255(e), an individual can resort to ha

beas via § 2255(e) only where the particular claim he seeks to bring would have been cognizable under pre-AEDPA principles. Thus, the majority has no good answer to interpreting the saving clause as doing what Congress crafted it to do— among other things, ensuring equivalence between § 2255 and the prior postconviction remedy being replaced or modi

1245 (CA11 1999), overruled by McCarthan v. Director of Goodwill Industries-Suncoast Inc. , 851 F. 3d 1076 (CA11 2017) (en banc).Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 507 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting fed, unless Congress clearly establishes otherwise. A suc

cessive statutory innocence claim could have been brought prior to the 1996 addition of § 2255(h), and Congress has not clearly foreclosed such claims in the text of § 2255. There

fore, the saving clause applies, and Jones should have been permitted to raise his legal innocence claim by fling a habeas petition under § 2241. II The foregoing analysis assumes, as the majority does, that the only hope of a prisoner in Jones's position is to assert his statutory innocence claim via a habeas petition fled under § 2241 per the saving clause, because § 2255(h) prevents the fling of such a successive § 2255 motion. But I would not be so quick to assume that a successive § 2255 motion asserting statutory innocence is impermissible due to § 2255(h). Here is why. Nothing in the whole of § 2255 suggests that Congress ever considered the scenario presented in this case—one in which a prisoner who has already fled a postconviction motion sud

denly gets a new claim of legal innocence (after his frst peti

tion was fled) based on a development in Supreme Court case law. Therefore, it is not at all clear that Congress de

termined that such an individual is simply out of luck. Far from making the decision that a prisoner in this circumstance should not be permitted to raise that newly available claim by fling another § 2255 motion—as the majority maintains— Congress has simply never spoken to what is supposed to happen with newly available claims of legal innocence. To reach today's conclusion, then, the majority draws a “negative inference” that Congress intended for § 2255's “sec

ond or successive” bar to preclude successive flings that con

tain legal innocence claims. Ante , at 477. But the majori

ty's inferential reasoning is highly problematic in at least two respects. First, negative inferences drawn without proper context can be notoriously unreliable. And, as detailed below, there508 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting are myriad reasons for skepticism here. Section 2255(h)'s anti-clai m-splitting purpose is one. Another is the likely reason that legal innocence claims do not appear in the text of the statute (spoiler alert: they were inadvertently omit

ted). Background equitable principles and the practical con

sequences of preventing the fling of successive petitions in this circumstance are additional key contextual clues that the majority seems to have missed. Second, I am suspicious of the majority's choice to resort to inferential reasoning at all, given that this Court has long held that we will not read a statute to displace access to “the great writ” unless Congress has been clear about its inten

tion to accomplish this result. Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall. 85, 95, 102 (1869). The clear-statement rule is plainly applicable here, and the majority offers the fimsiest of explanations for its decision to deviate from its application at the threshold of today's interpretation. In short, as shown below, the initial assumption that Con

gress necessarily meant for § 2255(h) to bar Jones's succes

sive petition asserting statutory innocence is shaky, at best. I would have held that Jones's petition can proceed, even without reliance on the saving clause, because § 2255(h) does not bar it. A The majority says that “since [AEDPA], second or succes

sive § 2255 motions are barred unless they rely on” one of two (and only two) circumstances: “ `newly discovered evi

dence,' § 2255(h)(1), or `a new rule of constitutional law,' § 2255(h)(2).” Ante , at 469. Legal innocence claims are barred, the majority holds, pursuant to this “straightforward negative inference.” Ante , at 477. But there is a good rea

son that the negative-inference canon “must be applied with great caution.” A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 107 (2012). And the reason is that “its application depends so much on context.” Ibid

. In this case, for instance, there are several strong contextualCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 509 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting clues that substantially undercut the majority's purportedly “straightforward” inferential reasoning. 1 First of all, while the majority interprets § 2255(h) as if Congress designed that provision to impose “fnality” with

out regard to the claims at issue (other than the two listed situations), see ante , at 480, as it turns out, that is not the primary purpose of § 2255(h). Instead, § 2255(h)'s “second or successive petition” bar was inserted into AEDPA to ensure that all available claims a prisoner has are brought in a sin

gle postconviction petition. In circumstances where the prisoner seeks to assert a claim that was previously unavail

able (i. e. , a claim that could not have been raised before), Congress permitted successive petitions. Explaining this fully requires me to make a preliminary big-picture point. Section 2255 (originally and as amended by AEDPA) is not a gauntlet of arbitrary hurdles that Con

gress has erected to stymie prisoners who seek to obtain judicial review of their detention. Indeed, as explained, when Congress frst enacted § 2255, it had no intention of shrinking the catalog of available postconviction claims. Ante , at 473–474; see also Part I, supra . To be sure, Con

gress has undertaken to restrict the writ's availability some

what since § 2255 was frst enacted, but it has nevertheless continued to appreciate the signifcance of access to postcon

viction review of the legality of a prisoner's detention. Hence, even after AEDPA, Congress permits all incarcer

ated individuals—including those who have been convicted of serious crimes and who are serving sentences that have been imposed by courts of competent jurisdiction—to seek collateral relief. See §§ 2254(a), 2255(a). Still, when it enacted AEDPA in 1996, Congress was aware of how § 2255's postconviction processes had been op

erating on the ground since § 2255's enactment. Thus, Con

gress quite rationally sought to “ `balance' ” the “ `individual510 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting interest in justice that arises in the extraordinary case' ” w ith “ `the societal interests in fnality, comity, and conserva

tion of scarce judicial resources.' ” McQuiggin v. Perkins , 569 U. S. 383, 393 (2013) (quoting Schlup v. Delo , 513 U. S. 298, 324 (1995)). Section 2255(h) refects this balancing. “What emerges from a review of the debates over the successive petition restrictions is a clear sense that” Congress wanted to “pre

ven[t] manipulation of the system through relitigation of pre

viously presented claims or strategic withholding of claims for later presentation,” while still creating “a mechanism that would allow prisoners to have one full, fair chance to present their meritorious . . . claims to the federal courts.” B. Stevenson, The Politics of Fear and Death: Successive Problems in Capital Federal Habeas Corpus Cases, 77 N. Y. U. L. Rev. 699, 772 (2002). As Senator Hatch said at the time: “We have provided for protection of Federal habeas corpus, but we do it one time and that is it—unless, of course, they can truly come up with evidence of innocence that could not have been presented at trial. There we allow successive petitions.” 141 Cong. Rec. 15042 (1995). Then-Senator Biden similarly explained that the goal of AEDPA was “es

sentially giving one bite out of the apple to drastically reduce the ability to have successive petitions unless there is some egregious action that is learned about after the petition is fled, the frst petition.” Id. , at 15027. 7 Thus, Congress enacted § 2255(h) to prevent prisoners from engaging in manipulative fling practices—such as claim splitting, i. e. , the ineffcient business of prisoners with time on their hands doling out their existing postconviction claims in a series of successive motions fled in court seriatim. See

7 See also H. R. Rep. No. 101–681, pt. 1, p. 111 (1990) (explaining that the purpose of a predecessor bill was “to promote fnality” but also “to ensure that habeas corpus petitioners have one fair opportunity to present their Federal claims to the Federal courts”).Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 511 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting Sanders , 373 U. S., at 18 (noting that a prisoner may “delib

erately withhol[d]” or “deliberately abando[n]” claims in a frst postconviction petition “in the hope of being granted two hearings rather than one”). 8 And, tellingly, because Congress was focused on that problem—not attempting to impose “fnality” writ large—it did not bar all successive pe

titions; to the contrary, it proceeded to identify particular circumstances in which another collateral challenge would be authorized. §§ 2255(h)(1)–(2). Additional doubts about the majority's negative inference surface when one recognizes that the two circumstances Congress carved out of the successive-petition bar share an important common thread: Both situations relate to the new ness of the claim that the prisoner seeks to assert in a succes

sive petition. That is, both prongs of § 2255(h) that author

ize a successive petition do so where a petitioner brings a claim that arose after the time in which the prisoner would or could have fled his frst petition. Ibid. (authorizing suc

cessive petitions raising “newly discovered evidence” or “a new rule of constitutional law” (emphasis added)). In light of this key observation, the majority's assumption that § 2255(h) bars Jones's claim is signifcantly hobbled. Jones's statutory innocence claim is also “new”—in the sense that it was not available to him when his frst § 2255 petition was fled. 9 And Jones's claim shares other features of the

8 It appears that, in enacting restrictions on successive petitions, Con

gress was primarily worried about successive petitions fled by state pris

oners on death row, because a petition could delay the execution of a death sentence. See Stevenson, 77 N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 723–730. Indeed, the law is called the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. That concern does not apply to a situation like Jones's, since he is not serving a death sentence, and nothing about a successive petition delays the execu

tion of his sentence of imprisonment.

9 Prior to this Court's holding in Rehaif v. United States , 588 U. S. ––– (2019), well-established Circuit precedent had barred Jones's claim. United States v. Jones , 266 F. 3d 804, 810, n. 5 (CA8 2001) (citing United512 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting circumstances that Congress exempted from the “second or successive” general prohibition as well—including that it im

plicates innocence, see § 2255(h)(1), and stems from a retroac

tively applicable Supreme Court opinion, see § 2255(h)(2). Nor does the fling of Jones's successive petition implicate any anti-claim-splitting rationale, as Jones did not manipula

tively withhold his legal innocence claim during his initial § 2255 proceedings. Indeed, he could not possibly have done so, since this Court did not decide Rehaif v. United States , 588 U. S. ––– (2019), which provided the basis for his claim, until nearly two decades after Jones fled his frst petition. In short, it is hard to believe that a Congress that ex

pressly authorized “new” claims involving innocence or those that arise from developments in Supreme Court case law despite § 2255(h)'s successive-petition bar also meant for § 2255(h) to preclude Jones from bringing the claim that he seeks to fle here. 2 The majority's negative inference also rests on the bald assumption that Congress intentionally left statutory inno

cence out of its list of carveouts, because it wanted those claims to be barred if brought in a successive petition. Ante , at 480 (asserting that “Congress has chosen fnality over error correction” with respect to statutory innocence claims brought in successive petitions (emphasis added)). But there is a perfectly logical alternative explanation for why
States v. Kind , 194 F. 3d 900, 906 (CA8 1999)). After Jones's conviction became fnal, this Court decided Rehaif , which interpreted the elements of Jones's crime of conviction more narrowly than some Courts of Appeals had, and thereby recognized a potential basis for Jones and other similar defendants to claim legal innocence. And because Rehaif was a Supreme Court ruling that changed the scope of a criminal statute, it applied retro

actively to individuals (like Jones) whose convictions had become fnal at the time it was issued. Schriro v. Summerlin , 542 U. S. 348, 351–352 (2004); Bousley v. United States , 523 U. S. 614, 620–621 (1998).Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 513 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting statutory innocence claims do not appear as express exclu

si ons in the text of § 2255(h), an explanation that is based on another important contextual reference point: the enactment history of the statute. Section 2255(h) was enacted in the same Public Law as § 2244(b), a provision that contains analogous second-or

successive petition limitations for state prisoners. Indeed, Congress “appears to have modeled § 2255(h)(2)” on those state-prisoner provisions. Chazen v. Marske , 938 F. 3d 851, 863 (CA7 2019) (Barrett, J., concurring) (citing R. Fallon, J. Manning, D. Meltzer, & D. Shapiro, Hart and Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System 1362 (7th ed. 2015) (Hart & Wechsler)). Like § 2255(h), § 2244(b)— the model provision—does not address statutory inno

cence claims in any fashion. But that is simply because there is no such thing as a statutory innocence claim in the realm of federal collateral relief for state prisoners. See Hart & Wechsler 1362; see also Estelle v. McGuire , 502 U. S. 62, 67 (1991) (“[F]ederal habeas corpus relief does not lie for errors of state law” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Thus, as others have observed, when Congress crafted § 2255(h) based on the state-prisoner model in § 2244(b), it seems to have “ `lost sight of the fact that' ” federally incar

cerated individuals “ ` can raise federal statutory claims in their collateral attacks.' ” Chazen , 938 F. 3d, at 863 (quoting Hart & Wechsler 1362; emphasis added); Chazen , 938 F. 3d, at 863 (suggesting that the omission of legal innocence claims from § 2255(h) was due to “congressional oversight”); Reply Brief for Respondent 15. To me, this contextual revelation rocks the foundation of the majority's negative inference. That is, it is plausible (and perhaps even likely) that Congress did not appreciate fully that the modeled-after language establishing a successive-petition bar did not capture the full scope of avail

514 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting able claims for federal prisoners. 10 And, of course, if Con

gress simply overlooked statutory innocence claims when it crafted § 2255(h), then the omitted language that the major

ity puts so much stock in is not actually indicative of Con

gress having “chosen fnality” with respect to statutory in

nocence claims. Ante , at 480. Instead, the absence of any textual reference to statutory innocence would be wholly unremarkable. 3 Given the purpose and history of § 2255(h) as I have just described them, I fnd quite compelling the Government's ob

servation that “[n]othing in AEDPA [actually] justifes an in

ference that Congress silently repealed the traditional [post

conviction] remedy for federal prisoners who have been imprisoned for conduct that Congress did not criminalize.” Brief for Respondent 28. I proceed here to add that nothing outside of AEDPA—not the background legal principles that existed at the time Congress enacted the statute, nor the practical consequences of reading § 2255(h) in this manner— supports that inference either. Take equity, for instance. When Congress crafted § 2255(h), it legislated against an important background equi

table principle pertaining to postconviction relief: Courts should not interpret statutory provisions governing habeas review to even “ `run the risk' ” of causing prisoners to “ `for

10 The rushed and emotionally charged manner in which AEDPA came into fruition makes Congress's lack of attention to this detail a very realis

tic possibility. AEDPA was passed in reaction to the Oklahoma City bom

bing, and President Clinton had “demand[ed]” its passage by the 1-year anniversary of that event. J. Liebman, An “Effective Death Penalty”? AEDPA and Error Detection in Capital Cases, 67 Brooklyn L. Rev. 411, 413 (2011); see also Stevenson, 77 N. Y. U. L. Rev., at 701. Both this Court and commentators have observed that, likely as a result, AEDPA is “shoddily crafted and poorly cohered.” L. Kovarsky, Death Ineligibility and Habeas Corpus, 95 Cornell L. Rev. 329, 342 (2010); see also Lindh v. Murphy , 521 U. S. 320, 336 (1997) (“[I]n a world of silk purses and pigs' ears, [AEDPA] is not a silk purse of the art of statutory drafting”).Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 515 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting ever los[e] their opportunity for any federal review of their

. . . claims.' ” Panetti v. Quarterman , 551 U. S. 930, 945–946 (2007) (quoting Rhines v. Weber, 544 U. S. 269, 275 (2005)); see also Stewart v. Martinez-Villareal , 523 U. S. 637, 645 (1998). This means that Congress was well aware that courts consistently “rel[y] on equitable doctrines to carve out . . . ways petitioners can bypass [otherwise applicable] proce

dural obstacles” when a prisoner has “not had a full and fair opportunity to litigate their federal claims.” E. Primus, Eq

uitable Gateways: Toward Expanded Federal Habeas Corpus Review of State-Court Criminal Convictions, 61 Ariz. L. Rev. 291, 305 (2019). 11 Knowing that courts are equitable tribu

nals that tend to operate in this fashion should have prompted Congress to express its intention to override that value (assuming that it actually intended to completely fore

close new legal innocence claims). Congress did not do so; yet the majority reads its silence to accomplish that same extraordinarily inequitable result. 12 The practical consequences that inure from the majority's reading also undercut substantially the negative inference upon which the majority relies. We have consistently warned that courts should “resis[t] an interpretation of [AEDPA] that would `produce troublesome results' [and] `create procedural anomalies.' ” Panetti , 551 U. S., at 946

11 Many of the Courts of Appeals that had read § 2255(e) as saving legal innocence claims invoked this equitable principle. See, e. g. , In re Daven

port , 147 F. 3d, at 609; Triestman , 124 F. 3d, at 378; In re Dorsainvil , 119 F. 3d, at 251. As lower courts also recognized, the impetus to provide a meaningful opportunity for review of a postconviction claim was especially strong when failure to hear the claim might result in a “miscarriage of justice.” See Reyes-Requena , 243 F. 3d, at 904; In re Dorsainvil , 119 F. 3d, at 251

.

12 Theoretically, Jones had “an” opportunity to raise his claim. But, in my view, it was not a meaningful one. Well-established Circuit prece

dent barred the claim at the time of Jones's direct appeal and frst petition. See n. 9, supra . Jones has never had any opportunity, meaningful or otherwise, to rely on Rehaif 's authoritative construction.516 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting (quoting Castro v. United States , 540 U. S. 375, 380 (2003)). The majority does not speak to this at all, but its interpreta

tion of § 2255 produces bizarre outcomes. First, there is the quirky procedural anomaly that arises due to the fact that statutory innocence claims are fully au

thorized in the postconviction review context. This Court's recognition that a statute covers a narrower scope of crimi

nal conduct than was previously acknowledged falls within the narrow subset of criminal law decisions that are fully retroactive, meaning that a federal prisoner can rely upon that new determination whether his case is still on direct review or not. Schriro v. Summerlin , 542 U. S. 348, 351– 352 (2004); Bousley , 523 U. S., at 620–621. But reading § 2255(h) to bar a successive petition raising legal innocence would mean that most prisoners who would (remarkably) be eligible for such retroactive relief would turn out to have no mechanism for actually requesting it. A strange practical conundrum, to say the least. Inferring that § 2255(h) bars legal innocence claims when brought in a successive petition also produces stunningly dis

parate results that bear no relationship to Congress's pur

ported fnality goals. Consider two individuals who havebeen convicted of the same federal crime—perhaps two codefendants who were tried and sentenced together. Both complete their direct appeals, but only one fles a § 2255 mo

tion within AEDPA's statute of limitations, while the other one decides not to or misses the deadline. If § 2255(h) bars a successive petition raising a legal innocence claim, then when Rehaif is handed down—altering the elements of the crime of conviction such that both prisoners have a colorable claim of legal innocence—only the one who did not previously fle a § 2255 petition can raise this retroactive statutory inno

cence claim. Reference to Congress's interest in “fnality” cannot ex

plain this odd unequal treatment. Under the Court's inter

pretation, a prisoner whose conviction became fnal 30 yearsCite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 517 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting ago can assert a Rehaif claim if he never previously fled a § 2255 motion, whereas someone whose conviction became fnal 2 years ago cannot if he has already had a § 2255 peti

tion adjudicated. 13 Interpreting § 2255(h) as completely foreclosing successive petitions bringing statutory innocence claims also places prisoners in an untenable catch-22 that cannot be what any rational Congress actually intended. Consider what has happened in this very case. Per AEDPA's statute of limita

tions, Jones had to fle his frst § 2255 petition within one year of his conviction becoming fnal. § 2255(f). He did so, and that petition was successful ; the Eighth Circuit found that Jones had received ineffective assistance of counsel. United States v. Jones , 403 F. 3d 604, 605 (2005). In the majority's view, by seeking to vindicate his Sixth Amend

ment rights in this way, Jones has forfeited, forever and for all time, his right to rely on any new retroactive Supreme Court opinion that suggests he is incarcerated for noncrimi

nal behavior. There is no indication that Congress meant for Jones and other prisoners in his position to have to choose between pursing an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim and a claim of legal innocence. * * * Despite all this, the majority clings to its “straightfor

ward” negative inference and interprets § 2255(h) as a bar to a court's consideration of Jones's legal innocence claim. My point is that, with so many contextual indicators that Con

gress did not really mean for § 2255(h) to be read to preclude new claims of statutory innocence, the Court should have simply determined that Jones's petition, which asserts such

13 Accommodating the possibility of retroactively applicable Supreme Court opinions, § 2255 runs the statute of limitations not just from the date on which the conviction became fnal, but also from the date a new, retroactively applicable right was recognized by the Supreme Court. § 2255(f)(3).518 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting a claim, was not plainly barred by § 2255(h), and could thus proceed in a successive § 2255 petition. B Instead of drawing an inference about the operation of § 2255(h), the most “straightforward” way of determining whether Jones's legal innocence claim is precluded by stat

ute, ante , at 480, would have been to apply our clearstatement rule to today's interpretation. 1 A “longstanding rule” of this Court, INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U. S. 289, 298 (2001), the clear-statement rule directs that, before interpreting a congressional enactment as “ `clos[ing the Court's] doors to a class of habeas petitioners,' ” the Court must search for a “ `clear indication that such was Con

gress' intent,' ” Panetti , 551 U. S., at 946 (quoting Castro , 540 U. S., at 381). This principle recognizes that Congress must “speak unambiguously when it seeks to effect a result that, although constitutional, would undermine a constitutionally derived value.” J. Manning, Textualism and the Equity of the Statute, 101 Colum. L. Rev. 1, 121–122 (2001) (Manning). And, before today, this Court has repeatedly recognized the importance of the clear-statement rule with respect to any analysis of an Act of Congress that potentially restricts ac

cess to the writ of habeas corpus or its statutory equiva

lent. 14 In fact, “where a provision precluding review is claimed to bar habeas review,” we have “required a particu

larly clear statement.” Demore v. Kim , 538 U. S. 510, 517 (2003) (emphasis added).

14 See, e. g. , Boumediene v. Bush , 553 U. S. 723, 738 (2008); McQuiggin v. Perkins , 569 U. S. 383, 397 (2013); Holland v. Florida , 560 U. S. 631, 646 (2010); Panetti v. Quarterman , 551 U. S. 930, 946 (2007); Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , 548 U. S. 557, 575 (2006); Demore v. Kim , 538 U. S. 510, 517 (2003); Castro v. United States , 540 U. S. 375, 381 (2003); INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U. S. 289, 298 (2001); Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall. 85, 102 (1869).Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 519 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting The clear-statement rule is plainly implicated here. Under the state of the law at the time AEDPA was enacted, prisoners were entitled to bring a petition to assert a new claim of legal innocence, even a second or successive petition. Supra , at 501–502. Congress could change that state of af

fairs, but, under the clear-statement rule, if it intended to do so, it needed to speak clearly to effectuate that result. At a more general level of analysis, the clear-statement rule also applies to these circumstances because the inter

pretive question in this case touches upon the venerated writ of habeas corpus—the only writ that is expressly mentioned in the Constitution. Art. I, § 9, cl. 2; Holland , 560 U. S., at 649. We have long recognized that the clear-statement rule serves the core liberty interests protected by the writ of habeas corpus. See Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall., at 103 (hold

ing, more than 150 years ago, that the Court had jurisdictionover a particular habeas petition and relying on the clearstatement rule to reach that conclusion, explaining that, to conclude otherwise, would “greatly weaken the effcacy of the writ” and “deprive the citizen in many cases of its bene

fts”). Likewise, in modern times, we have been especially careful to reference clear-statement principles, and thereby eschew statutory interpretations that would (perhaps unin

tentionally) foreclose judicial review of postconviction claims, even where the text of the statute might (sometimes even strongly) suggest otherwise. 15

15 For example, we cited the clear-statement rule when declining to read § 2244(b)(2), which generally prohibits second or successive habeas peti

tions fled by state prisoners, as blocking a second-in-time habeas petition that raised an incompetent-to-be-executed claim, even though, literally read, the statute could have done so. Panetti , 551 U. S., at 942–943, 945– 946. Similarly, in Holland , the Court relied on the clear-statement rule when evaluating AEDPA's 1-year statute of limitations, holding that the unequivocal statutory limitations period can be equitably tolled, even though the text of AEDPA did not include equitable tolling among the enumerated exceptions. 560 U. S., at 646–649. Likewise, in Castro , the Court used the clear-statement rule to reject the argument that520 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting Furthermore, and signifcantly for present purposes, we have already determined that the necessary “clear state

ment” here—i. e. , the signal from Congress that justifes reading a statute as foreclosing access to venerated postcon

viction review processes—cannot be derived from negative inferences drawn from statutory text. In Ex parte Yerger, for instance, we declared that interpreting a statute to “[r]e

pea[l] by implication” habeas jurisdiction is “not favored.” 8 Wall., at 105. More recently, we warned (again) that “[i]m

plications from statutory text or legislative history are not suffcient to repeal habeas jurisdiction; instead, Congress must articulate specifc and unambiguous statutory direc

tives to effect a repeal.” St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 299 (citing Ex parte Yerger, 8 Wall., at 105). And, again, in Holland , this Court explained that the clear-statement rule generally prohibits a court from inferring that the “inclu[sion of] one item . . . is to exclude other similar items” in order to read a statute as forbidding review of a postconviction claim. 560 U. S., at 648; see also id. , at 649 (“counsel[ing] hesitancy be

fore interpreting AEDPA's statutory silence as indicating a congressional intent to close courthouse doors”). Yet, here, as the majority appears to admit, the only way to read § 2255(h) as barring Jones's statutory innocence claim is to infer that such preclusion is what Congress intended. Ante , at 478, 490. This case would have been easily resolved if we had ap

plied the clear-statement rule at the outset, as we have al

- § 2244(b)(3)(E)—which prohibits habeas petitioners from seeking certiorari review of a “ `grant or denial of an authorization by a court of appeals to fle a second or successive application' ”—prevented this Court from reviewing whether the lower courts had mistakenly concluded that the federal prisoner's petition was in fact a “second or successive” petition. 540 U. S., at 379–381. Finally, in St. Cyr, the Court utilized the clearstatement rule to dispense with the contention that AEDPA stripped fed

eral courts of jurisdiction to review a noncitizen's habeas petition raising a pure question of law. 533 U. S., at 298–299, 314.Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 521 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting ways done in cases of this nature. Doing so would have appropriately eliminated a reading of § 2255(h) that fore

closes access to habeas relief by negative implication. Use of the rule would have thus protected core constitutional norms by “ensur[ing] Congress does not, by broad or general language, legislate on a sensitive topic inadvertently or with

out due deliberation.” Spector v. Norwegian Cruise Line Ltd. , 545 U. S. 119, 139 (2005) (opinion of Kennedy, J.); see also Will v. Michigan Dept. of State Police , 491 U. S. 58, 65 (1989). 2 In the last few pages of its opinion, the Court makes the unceremonious (but still startling) announcement that the clear-statement rule is inapplicable to today's analysis of § 2255(h). Ante , at 490–492. 16 Try as it might, in my view, the majority has failed to provide a single persuasive reason for this dramatic break. First, the majority suggests that the clear-statement rule is not appropriate when interpreting provisions related to “fnality”—and seems to draw a line between AEDPA's statute of limitations, which does get clear-statement treat

ment, and its provisions governing successive petitions. Ante , at 490–491. This is nonsense. Both AEDPA pro

visions use similar language. § 2255(f) (“A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to a motion under this section”); § 2255(h) (“A second or successive motion must . . . contain . . . ”). And both procedural limitations relate to Congress's interest in fnality. Ante , at 491; Wood v. Milyard , 566 U. S. 463, 472 (2012) (noting that AEDPA's statute of limi

tations “lends fnality to . . . court judgments within a rea

16 It appears that no one but the Court's majority even thought it possi

ble to sidestep the clear-statement rule with respect to today's interpre

tive exercise. Both Jones and the Government expressly invoked it. And Court-appointed amicus did not dispute its applicability.522 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting sonable time” (emphasis added; internal quotation marks omitted)). 17 N ext, the majority conspicuously downplays the stakes in this case. Not once does its opinion make direct mention of the fact that the claim the majority says § 2255(h) silently precludes is one that implicates core values because it in

volves legal innocence . Instead, the majority repeatedly describes Jones's bid for access to the postconviction review process as bringing a mere “statutory” claim. Ante , at 470, 480, 488, 490. 18 But statutory claims that suggest a person's innocence are different in kind from more run-of-the-mill statutory claims, such as a technical, nonprejudicial violation of a criminal procedure rule. See United States v. Addoni

zio , 442 U. S. 178, 186–187 (1979); Davis , 417 U. S., at 346– 347 (citing Hill v. United States , 368 U. S. 424, 428–429 (1962)). In any event, the majority does not cite a single case that suggests that an Act of Congress that threatens to cut off access to habeas (or its statutory equivalent) should be treated any differently for purposes of application of the clear-statement rule if a petitioner's claim has a statutory basis. The majority's most full-throated defense of its jettisoning of clear-statement principles lies in its attempt to cast statu

17 This Court has also treated these two provisions as similarly suscep

tible to equitable exceptions; for instance, the “miscarriage of justice” principle that permits bypassing procedural barriers applies to both. McQuiggin , 569 U. S., at 386, 392–393; Schlup , 513 U. S., at 320.

18 The euphemistic manner in which the Court's opinion tiptoes around what Jones is actually arguing is noteworthy. The majority says that, by operation of § 2255(h), prisoners in Jones's position cannot take advantage of “a more favorable interpretation of statutory law,” ante , at 469–470, which it also obliquely characterizes as “an intervening change in statu

tory interpretation,” ante , at 471, or “a newly adopted narrowing interpre

tation of a criminal statute,” ante , at 477. In fact, the word “innocence” only appears in the Court's opinion when recounting the Government's arguments. Ante , at 489, 491. If the majority has spared a thought for the appropriate standard when a petitioner is claiming legal innocence, I could not fnd it in the Court's opinion.Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 523 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting tory innocence claims as not “historically or constitutionally grounded. ” Ante , at 492. The frst and most obvious problem with this effort is that the historical pedigree of aclaim is irrelevant for clear-statement purposes. The clearstatement rule is applicable here because the statute being interpreted involves access to the writ of habeas corpus— a signifcant constitutional value that we would not assume Congress would discard without careful consideration. See Manning 121–122; see also Holland , 560 U. S., at 646–649. And, so triggered, our clear-statement canon of construction is not rendered inapplicable just because the particular type of claim that a prisoner seeks to advance in the context of a habeas or postconviction proceeding (if he is afforded one) might not date back to the founding era. This must be whythe majority cites no precedent that splices the clearstatement rule in this fashion. Looking back to the time of the founding to determine whether the clear-statement rule applies to our interpreta

tion of a statute passed in 1996 also makes no sense. The clear-statement question relates to what Congress intended with respect to the meaning of the statute at the time it was enacted . When Congress introduced § 2255(h), it codifed or changed the law that existed at that time (i. e. , in 1996). See, e. g. , Slack v. McDaniel , 529 U. S. 473, 483 (2000) (noting that AEDPA's certifcate-of-appealability provisions codifed the prevailing judicial standard). Thus, when this Court has previously applied the clear-statement rule and analyzed the meaning of particular AEDPA provisions, the feelings of the Framers were of no moment. Instead, we properly exam

ined the law leading up to AEDPA's enactment, not founding-era sources. See, e. g. , Panetti , 551 U. S., at 944; Magwood v. Patterson , 561 U. S. 320, 337 (2010) (plurality opinion). Even if the majority was right with respect to its assump

tion that founding-era practices bear on whether the clearstatement rule applies here, historical practice plainly under

524 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting mines its assertion that legal innocence claims are of recent v intage. Supreme Court Justices riding circuit in the early 19th century repeatedly considered the merits of habeas pe

titions fled by individuals who argued they were being wrongfully incarcerated because the laws that had been in

voked to justify their confnement, properly construed, did not reach their conduct. 19 Moreover, and importantly, since the mid-19th century, the statutory scheme for postconvic

tion review has permitted petitions based not only on a “vio

lation of the constitution” but also on a “violation of the . . . law of the United States.” Judiciary Act of Feb. 5, 1867, ch. 28, § 1, 14 Stat. 385; see also § 2255; W. Church, Writ of

19 Ex parte D'Olivera , 7 F. Cas. 853, 854 (No. 3,967) (CC Mass. 1813) (Story, J.) (construing a 1790 statute criminalizing desertion from a mer

chant ship by “seamen engaged in the merchants' service of the United States” as not covering certain “foreign seamen in foreign vessels” and granting habeas relief to such persons); United States v. Bainbridge , 24 F. Cas. 946, 951–952 (No. 14,497) (CC Mass. 1816) (Story, J.) (considering on the merits, but ultimately rejecting, a habeas petitioner's argument that an enlistment law did not apply to minors enlisted without parental con

sent); Ex parte Randolph , 20 F. Cas. 242, 254–257 (No. 11,558) (CC Va. 1833) (Marshall, C. J.) (granting habeas relief to an individual civilly im

prisoned because the statute at issue, properly interpreted, did not apply to the petitioner); see also, e. g. , Grant v. United States , 58 F. 694, 695–697 (CA9 1893) (granting writ of error to individuals who had been convicted following a trial, on the ground that the law at issue, “fairly interpreted,” did not reach the petitioners' conduct because “the case does not come within the letter of the statute,” and citing cases reaching the same conclu

sion); In re Wahll , 42 F. 822, 825–826 (Minn. 1890) (considering, but reject

ing on the merits, a convicted prisoner's claim that his acts did not amount to a violation of a federal law criminalizing the mailing of obscene letters).

The majority has plainly expended a considerable amount of effort to distinguish all of these cases. See ante , at 485–486, and n. 8. Still, its vigorous attempt falls short. For example, the majority tries to distin

guish Wahll on the ground that the court “considered but rejected a simi

lar argument for ordering pretrial release.” Ante , at 486, n. 8. But it ignores that the Wahll court still considered the merits of the statutory argument; the court did not dismiss the case on the ground that such statutory arguments were not cognizable after the prisoner's conviction. 42 F., at 825–826.Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 525 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting Habeas Corpus § 169, p. 249 (2d ed. 1893) (“The issue raised on the hearing of a habeas corpus may be one of law simply”). 20 To the extent the majority's assessment of the purportedly nascent nature of statutory innocence claims rests on its view that, at the time of the founding, habeas relief was rarely available when a petition was brought by a convicted individual (as opposed to a pretrial detainee ), ante , at 482– 487, there are two additional problems. For one thing, even assuming that a detainee-versus-convict scope-of-habeas dis

tinction existed at the dawn of our Nation, Congress has now squarely rejected it. 21 However grounded in history and tradition the Court's own view of the scope of habeas might be, it is obviously not shared by the Legislature that enacted the statute we are now interpreting.

20 This argument that statutory claims are not cognizable in the postcon

viction or habeas context has already been considered—and rejected—by this Court. For example, in St. Cyr, this Court cited various 17th- and 18th-century cases to conclude that the “issuance of the writ” of habeas corpus “encompassed detentions based on errors of law, including the erro

neous application or interpretation of statutes.” 533 U. S., at 302. And, in Boumediene , the Court reiterated that it is “uncontroversial . . . that the privilege of habeas corpus entitles the prisoner to a meaningful oppor

tunity to demonstrate that he is being held pursuant to `the erroneous application or interpretation' of relevant law.” 553 U. S., at 779 (quoting St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 302; emphasis added). Not once does the majority engage with the propositions stated in these cases. Nor does the majority grapple with the express statutory language in both the Judiciary Act of 1867 and § 2255 authorizing claims premised on violations of the “ `law of the United States.' ” Supra , at 524.

21 Section 2255 explicitly authorizes a convicted prisoner to “move the court which imposed the sentence” for the prescribed relief, and it allows petitions to be fled after “the date on which the judgment of conviction becomes fnal.” §§ 2255(a), (f)(1). Also, the major procedural change ac

complished by Congress's adoption of § 2255 in 1948 was to transfer the fling of postconviction petitions from the district of confnement to the sentencing court, see United States v. Hayman , 342 U. S. 205, 215–216 (1952)—a shift that only makes sense if Congress contemplated postcon

viction challenges.526 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting Second, here again, the majority evaluates the historical pedigree of legal innocence claims based on faulty history. It maintains that, historically, a court could review a habeas petition fled by a convicted individual only for “jurisdic

tional” errors (which the majority defnes narrowly). Ante , at 482–485, 491–492; cf. Edwards v. Vannoy , 593 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2021) ( **Gorsuch** , J., concurring). But those who have researched this contention have called it “narrative and myth but not history.” L. Kovarsky, Habeas Myths, Past and Present, 101 Texas L. Rev. Online 57, 79 (2022) (Ko

varsky); see also J. Siegel, Habeas, History, and Hermeneu

tics, 64 Ariz. L. Rev. 505, 524–532 (2022) (Siegel); Brown v. Davenport , 596 U. S. –––, ––– – ––– (2022) ( **Kagan** , J., dissenting). 22 At the very least, this take on early habeas practice ap

pears contradicted by United States v. Bainbridge , 24 F. Cas. 946 (No. 14,497) (CC Mass. 1816) (Story, J.). There, Justice Story considered a statutory innocence claim on the merits even though the individual had already pleaded guilty. Id. , at 949, 951–952. And the postconviction/preconviction dis

tinction also runs headlong into other precedents that have looked back on history and do not subscribe to such a narrow view. St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 302 (“[T]he issuance of the writ was not limited to challenges to the jurisdiction of the custo

dian”); Fay v. Noia , 372 U. S. 391, 404 (1963) (“Nor is it true that at common law habeas corpus was available only to in

quire into the jurisdiction, in a narrow sense, of the commit

22 The majority relies heavily on Ex parte Watkins , 3 Pet. 193 (1830), to support its purported “jurisdictional” line. Ante , at 483–485. But Wat

kins does not stand for the broad proposition that the majority derives. Watkins “itself relies on contested habeas history,” and is (as scholars have explained) distinguishable. Kovarsky 70–71. That Watkins cannot mean what the majority says is confrmed by the numerous “19th and early 20th century cases . . . that undeniably decided the merits of constitu

tional claims that were not premised on the detaining authority's lack of jurisdiction or application of an unconstitutional statute or sentence.” Hertz & Liebman § 2.4[c], at 44.Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 527 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting ting court” (citing Bushell's Case , Vaughn. 135, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006 (C. P. 1670))). Thus, assuming, arguendo , that the historical grounding of the particular type of claim Jones sought to bring even mat

ters, the majority is mistaken when it contends that a statu

tory innocence claim (including one brought in a successive petition) is not suffciently historical to warrant application of our clear-statement rule. * * * If the majority had applied the clear-statement rule, as it should have, to determine whether § 2255(h) precludes suc

cessive postconviction petitions that assert statutory inno

cence claims, today's interpretive task would have merely involved answering one simple question: Is there an unam

biguous sign in the text of § 2255 that Congress meant for § 2255(h) to strip an incarcerated individual of any opportu

nity to raise a new claim of legal innocence in a motion brought in federal court? No such sign exists. 23 Therefore, we could have (and should have) easily concluded that there is no statutory impediment to Jones's § 2255 motion being entertained by a court. III Finally, I believe that the canon of constitutional avoidance also does important work to guide—and constrain—the Court's interpretation of § 2255 in this case. See Zadvydas v. Davis , 533 U. S. 678, 689 (2001); cf. Pressley , 430 U. S., at 381–382 (relying on the saving clause to conclude that the District of Columbia's postconviction statute, which mirrored § 2255, was constitutional). The majority's bottom line, reading “the interplay” between § 2255(h) and § 2255(e), ante ,

23 The majority does not appear to dispute this conclusion, as it only engages with the clear-statement rule to categorically reject its applicabil

ity. Ante , at 490–492. The majority does not—and cannot—establish that, if applied here, the clear-statement rule is satisfed.528 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting at 469, is that a person in prison for noncriminal conduct cannot ask a federal court to review the legality of his deten

tion if he has previously fled a § 2255 petition. This position is stunning in a country where liberty is a constitutional guarantee and the courts are supposed to be dispensing jus

tice. It also raises hackles under at least two provisions of our founding charter. First, the Eighth Amendment. There is a nonfrivolous argument that the Constitution's protection against “cruel and unusual punishment” prohibits the incarceration of inno

cent individuals. See In re Davis , 557 U. S. 952, 953 (2009) (Stevens, J., concurring) (citing Triestman v. United States , 124 F. 3d 361, 377–380 (CA2 1997)); see also Herrera v. Col

lins , 506 U. S. 390, 432, n. 2 (1993) (Blackmun, J., dissenting) (“It . . . may violate the Eighth Amendment to imprison someone who is actually innocent”); Robinson v. California , 370 U. S. 660, 667 (1962). This is not to say that the Eighth Amendment creates a “freestanding entitlement to a second or successive round of postconviction review.” Ante , at 20. But here Jones seeks a single meaningful opportunity to have a federal court consider his claim of legal innocence. The majority's interpretation also implicates the Suspen

sion Clause. Art. I, § 9, cl. 2. The majority admits that, at a minimum, the Suspension Clause protects the right of ha

beas corpus as it existed at the time of the founding. 24 See

24 I reject the majority's suggestion that the Suspension Clause protects only the scope of the great writ as it existed in the founding era. Histori

cal habeas practice provides the foor, and not the ceiling, of Suspension Clause protection. St. Cyr, 533 U. S., at 301 (“ [A]t the absolute mini

mum , the Suspension Clause protects the writ `as it existed in 1789' ” (quoting Felker v. Turpin , 518 U. S. 651, 664 (1996); emphasis added)). The habeas remedy has “a dynamic element which itself was adopted by the framers,” W. Hurst, The Process of Constitutional Construction, in Supreme Court and Supreme Law 61 (E. Cahn ed. 1954) (statement of P. Freund), such that “to truly understand the scope of the writ `as it existed in 1789' is to understand its protean dynamism, not any of its specifc applications,” S. Vladeck, The New Habeas Revisionism, 124Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 529 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting ante , at 483. The majority also seems to acknowledge that, i n the late 18th century, an individual—even one who had been convicted of a crime—could invoke habeas to raise a “jurisdictional” error. Ante , at 483, 491–492

. Historically, the term “ `jurisdictional' ” when used by habeas courts “meant something much broader then than it means now.” Kovarsky 75; see also Siegel 524. And, importantly, a court lacked “jurisdiction”—and thus the writ could issue—when a person was incarcerated for noncriminal behavior. 25 Thus, it appears that, by its own lights, the majority today renders an interpretation of § 2255 that has potentially sig

nifcant constitutional implications. IV I conclude with an observation. Today's ruling follows a recent series of troubling AEDPA interpretations. 26 All of Harv. L. Rev. 941, 991 (2011); see also P. Halliday, Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire 160 (2010). But resolving that debate is unnecessary because Jones's claim implicates even the majority's crabbed view of the Suspension Clause.

25 See, e. g. , Ex parte Siebold , 100 U. S. 371, 376–377 (1880) (noting that a court's “authority” to “try and imprison” an individual stems from a particular statute and therefore a court has “no jurisdiction” if the law does not lawfully apply to the prisoner); Ex parte Bollman , 4 Cranch 75, 136 (1807) (“[A]s the crime with which the prisoners stand charged has not been committed, the court can only direct them to be discharged”); Matter of Corryell , 22 Cal. 178, 181 (1863) (“The Court derives its jurisdic

tion from the law, and its jurisdiction extends to such matters as the law declares to be criminal, and none other, and when it undertakes to im

prison for an offense to which no criminality is attached, it acts beyond its jurisdiction”); Bushell's Case , Vaughn. 135, 124 Eng. Rep. 1006 (C. P. 1670); W. Church, Writ of Habeas Corpus § 236, p. 327 (2d ed. 1893) (“[T]he pris

oner may be discharged on habeas corpus, either before or after judgment, where the statute or ordinance under which the proceedings are inaugu

rated against him, is unconstitutional, as this is a jurisdictional defect”).

26 See, e. g. , Shoop v. Twyford , 596 U. S. –––, ––– (2022) (restricting the ability of federal courts to use the All Writs Act in AEDPA cases); Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez , 596 U. S. –––, –––, ––– – –––, ––– – ––– (2022) (holding that, although ineffective assistance of postconviction counsel can be cause530 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting these opinions have now collectively managed to transform a statute that Congress designed to provide for a rational and orderly process of federal postconviction judicial review into an aimless and chaotic exercise in futility. The route to obtaining collateral relief is presently replete with imagined artifcial barriers, arbitrary dead ends, and traps for the un

wary. And today's turn makes the journey palpably absurd: It begins with the Supreme Court's (rare) announcement that a certain claim for release exists and is retroactively available to incarcerated individuals on collateral review, and ends with the realization that only an arbitrarily determined sliver of eligible prisoners (those who have not had the te

merity to fle a prior motion) are actually in a position to even ask a court to consider whether any such relief might be provided. It is quite clear that the Court's rulings in this area of the law refect a general ethos that convicted prisoners should not be permitted to fle § 2255 motions or obtain postconvic

tion relief at all. But what matters is what Congress wants with respect to the operation of the statutory provisions it enacts. And, as I have shown, Congress's aim in crafting § 2255 was to permit convicted prisoners to fle postconvic

tion motions asserting claims for collateral relief in a manner that also curbs abusive flings. Congress did not speak— one way or the other—as to what should happen if a prisoner to excuse a procedural default of a trial-ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, a federal court cannot gather evidence to establish postconviction counsel's ineffectiveness); Brown v. Davenport , 596 U. S. –––, –––, ––– – –––, –––, ––– (2022) (holding that a state prisoner who shows that a trial error prejudiced him under this Court's federal-habeas harmless-error standard must also run an AEDPA-derived gauntlet before receiving ha

beas relief); Edwards v. Vannoy , 593 U. S. –––, ––– – –––, ––– (2021) (elimi

nating, without any party requesting it, the ability of prisoners to argue that a new rule of criminal procedure announced by this Court should be fully retroactive as a “watershed” rule); see id. , at ––– – ––– ( **Kagan, J** 

., dissenting).Cite as: 599 U. S. 465 (2023) 531 **Jackson, J.** , dissenting who has previously fled a § 2255 motion gets a new claim of lega l innocence due to an intervening change in the law. Given Congress's silence on this matter, in my view, there is simply no justifcation for drawing a negative inference that Congress meant for § 2255 to operate in a manner that is patently inconsistent with the reasons it passed that stat

ute, or the background principles that animated the law more broadly at the time of the statute's enactment, or even (possi

bly) core constitutional principles. Instead, § 2255(e) should be read—consistent with Congress's general intent to ensure equivalence between the claims available in habeas and those that its new postconviction mechanism allowed—to permit prisoners who have a new and retroactive statutory inno

cence claim to fle a habeas petition in lieu of a § 2255 motion. Alternatively, we should honor Congress's clear interest in preserving a prisoner's ability to have one meaningful oppor

tunity to have all of his claims presented to a court, by allow

ing Jones to fle a petition asserting his new and retroactive claim of statutory innocence, notwithstanding what might otherwise be perceived as an ironclad bar in § 2255(h). In other words, as I see it, the negative inference that the majority draws today rests on nothing—and certainly nothing that actually derives from Congress's intent. Noth

ing in the text of § 2255, background principles concerning habeas relief, or AEDPA's enactment history compels (or even supports) the conclusion that Congress intended to completely foreclose claims like Jones's. And it is especially perverse to read the statute to lead to that result when doing so gives rise to legally dissonant, arbitrary, and untenable outcomes. So, the majority's “straightforward” determina

tion that this statute does preclude a prisoner in Jones's posi

tion from fling a successive petition to assert a legal in

nocence claim (which it reaches by refusing to follow the procedural norm that would have correctly framed the issue as a matter of congressional intent relative to clear

532 JONES v. HENDRIX **Jackson, J.** , dissenting statement principles) appears to stem from the Court's own v iews concerning fnality, not the will of Congress. Ultimately, of course, this all begs the question of how (and whether) Congress will respond to the Court's systematic neutering of the balanced postconviction processes that the Legislature has established. It seems to me that today's opinion—which unjustifably closes off all avenues for certain defendants to secure meaningful consideration of their inno

cence claims—creates an opening for Congress to step in and fx this problem.**Reporter’s Note** The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant punctuation. The following additional edits were made: None