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Page Number: 15.0

10 

JONES v. HENDRIX 

Opinion of the Court 

that §2255(e) does not permit recourse to §2241 in these cir-
cumstances).

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
a federal sentence is not authorized unless one of those two 
conditions is satisfied.  See Jennings v. Rodriguez, 583 U. S. 
___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 16) (“ ‘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 authoriza-
tion of a successive collateral attack based on new rules “of 
constitutional law” implies that Congress did not authorize 
successive collateral attacks based on new rules of noncon-
stitutional  law.  Had  Congress  wished  to  omit  the  word
“constitutional,” it easily could have done so.

The saving clause does not undermine this strong nega-
tive inference.  Basic principles of statutory interpretation
require that we construe the saving clause and §2255(h) in
harmony, 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  difficult 
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  gov-
erned by §2255, and it proceeds to specify when a second or 
successive collateral attack is permitted.  The saving clause
has nothing to say about that question.  Rather, like sub-
section (e) generally, it addresses the antecedent question
of the relationship between §§2241 and 2255. 

After  AEDPA,  as  before  it,  the  saving  clause  preserves
recourse  to  §2241  in  cases  where  unusual  circumstances