Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf
Page Number: 65

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

33 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

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.

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  ha-
beas petition filed by a convicted individual only for “juris-
dictional”  errors  (which  the  majority  defines  narrowly). 
Ante, at 15–18, 24–25; cf. Edwards v. Vannoy, 593 U. S. ___, 
___–___ (2021) (GORSUCH, J., concurring) (slip op., at 2–8).
But those who have researched this contention have called 
it “narrative and myth but not history.”  L. Kovarsky, Ha-
beas Myths, Past and Present, 101 Texas L. Rev. Online 57,
79  (2022)  (Kovarsky);  see  also  J.  Siegel,  Habeas,  History, 
and  Hermeneutics,  64  Ariz.  L.  Rev.  505,  524–532  (2022) 
(Siegel); Brown v. Davenport, 596 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2022) 
(KAGAN, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 2–8).22 

—————— 

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 filed after “the date on which the judgment of conviction 
becomes final.”  §§2255(a), (f )(1).  Also, the major procedural change ac-
complished by Congress’s adoption of §2255 in 1948 was to transfer the
filing of postconviction petitions from the district of confinement 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. 

22 The majority relies heavily on Ex parte Watkins, 3 Pet. 193 (1830), 
to support its purported “jurisdictional” line.  Ante, at 15–18.  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 confirmed by the numerous “19th and 
early 20th century cases . . . that undeniably decided the merits of con-
stitutional  claims  that  were  not  premised  on  the  detaining  authority’s 
lack of jurisdiction or application of an unconstitutional statute or sen-
tence.”  Hertz & Liebman §2.4[c], at 44.