Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf
Page Number: 10.0

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

5 

Opinion of the Court 

cover “all cases where any person may be restrained of his 
or  her  liberty  in  violation  of  the  constitution,  or  of  any
treaty or law of the United States.”  Ch. 28, 14 Stat. 385. 
For most of our Nation’s history, a federal prisoner “claim-
ing 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 recodification and reorgani-
zation of the Judiciary Code.  See generally 62 Stat. 869.  In 
enacting  the  present  Title  28  of  the  United  States  Code, 
Congress largely recodified the federal courts’ pre-existing
habeas authority in §§2241 and 2243, which, respectively,
confer  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 cre-
ated  §2255  as  a  separate  remedial  vehicle  specifically  de-
signed for federal prisoners’ collateral attacks on their sen-
tences.1  Id., at 967–968. 

The  “sole  purpose”  of  this  innovation,  as  this  Court 
acknowledged a few years later, “was to minimize the diffi-
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 
identical in scope to federal habeas corpus”); accord, United 
States v. Addonizio, 442 U. S. 178, 185 (1979); Hill v. United 
—————— 

1 As first 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 Security Improvement Act of 2007, §511, 121 Stat. 2545.  For sim-
plicity,  we  use  §2255’s  current  internal  designations  throughout  this 
opinion.