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Page Number: 48

16 

JONES v. HENDRIX 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

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 1.  Legal innocence claims are barred,
the majority holds, pursuant to this “straightforward nega-
tive inference.”  Ante, at 10.  But there is a good reason that
the  negative-inference  canon  “must  be  applied  with  great 
caution.”  A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Inter-
pretation 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 contextual 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 “finality” with-
out regard to the claims at issue (other than the two listed 
situations), see ante, at 12, 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  una-
vailable  (i.e.,  a  claim  that  could  not  have  been  raised  be-
fore), 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 ju-
dicial review of their detention.  Indeed, as explained, when 
Congress first enacted §2255, it had no intention of shrink-
ing the catalog of available postconviction claims.  Ante, at