Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf
Page Number: 69.0

Cite as:  599 U. S. ____ (2023) 

37 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

Thus, it appears that, by its own lights, the majority to-
day renders an interpretation of §2255 that has potentially 
significant constitutional implications. 

IV 
I conclude with an observation.  Today’s ruling follows a
recent series of troubling AEDPA interpretations.26  All of 
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 imag-
ined artificial barriers, arbitrary dead ends, and traps for 
the unwary.  And today’s turn makes the journey palpably 
absurd:  It  begins  with  the  Supreme  Court’s  (rare)  an-
nouncement  that  a  certain  claim  for  release  exists  and  is 
retroactively available to incarcerated individuals on collat-

—————— 
1670);  W.  Church,  Writ  of  Habeas  Corpus  §236,  p.  327  (2d  ed.  1893)
(“[T]he  prisoner  may  be  discharged  on  habeas  corpus,  either  before  or 
after judgment, where the statute or ordinance under which the proceed-
ings are inaugurated against him, is unconstitutional, as this is a juris-
dictional defect”). 

26 See, e.g., Shoop v. Twyford, 596 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 11) 
(restricting  the  ability  of  federal  courts  to  use  the  All  Writs  Act  in 
AEDPA cases); Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, 596 U. S. ___, ___, ___–___, 
___–___ (2022) (slip op., at 13, 15–16, 21–22) (holding that, although in-
effective  assistance  of  postconviction  counsel  can  be  cause  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) (slip op., at 1, 5–7, 14, 25) (holding that a state prisoner who shows 
that a trial error prejudiced him under this Court’s federal-habeas harm-
less-error standard must also run an AEDPA-derived gauntlet before re-
ceiving habeas relief ); Edwards v.  Vannoy, 593 U. S. ___, ___–___, ___ 
(2021) (slip op., at 10–11, 15) (eliminating, 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) (slip op., at 12–13).