Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-826_p702.pdf
Page Number: 15.0

Cite as:  596 U. S. ____ (2022) 

11 

Opinion of the Court 

B 
Eventually, this Court responded to the post-Brown ha-
beas boom by devising new rules aimed at separating the 
meritorious  needles  from  the  growing  haystack.   The  ha-
beas  statutes  themselves  provided  the  starting  place  for 
these efforts.  Recall that Congress invested federal courts 

—————— 
Felker v. Turpin, 518 U. S. 651, 663 (1996) (“[I]t was not until well into
this century that this Court interpreted [habeas statutes] to allow a final
judgment  of  conviction  in  a  state  court  to  be  collaterally  attacked”); 
Stone, 428 U. S., at 475 (in the 19th century, “[t]he writ was extended to
state prisoners[,] . . . [b]ut the limitation of federal habeas corpus juris-
diction  to  consideration  of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  sentencing  court  per-
sisted”); id., at 476 (Brown was a “landmark decision” that “expand[ed]” 
habeas);  Wright  v.  West,  505  U. S.  277,  285  (1992)  (plurality  opinion) 
(“[B]efore [Brown], . . . [a]bsent an alleged jurisdictional defect, habeas
corpus would not lie” (internal quotation marks omitted)).  The dissent 
also claims to understand Brown better than its contemporaries did, ig-
noring Justice Jackson’s critique as well as Professor Hart’s observation 
that Brown “manifestly broke new ground.”  The Supreme Court 1958 
Term—Foreword:  The Time Chart of the Justices, 73 Harv. L. Rev. 84, 
106 (1959); see also Bator 499–501; W. Duker, A Constitutional History
of Habeas Corpus 257–259 (1980); C. Forsythe, The Historical Origins of
Broad  Federal  Habeas  Review  Reconsidered,  70  Notre  Dame  L. Rev. 
1079,  1166–1168  (1999);  1  B.  Means,  Postconviction  Remedies  §§ 4:4,
4:10 (2021).  To be sure, the “category of claims deemed to be jurisdic-
tional  for  habeas  purposes”  “[g]radually  . . .  expand[ed]”  over  time. 
Wright, 505 U. S., at 285 (plurality opinion).  But that hardly proves the 
dissent’s ambitious thesis that habeas has, from the mid-19th century, 
functioned as plenary review for any “constitutional harms” that might 
lurk behind state-court judgments.  Post, at 6.  In fact, some of the 19th 
century cases the dissent cites did not even involve challenges to a court’s 
final judgment.  See, e.g., Ex parte Wells, 18 How. 307, 309 (1856) (chal-
lenge to custody under a Presidential pardon that supplanted a court’s 
sentence); Ex parte Royall, 117 U. S. 241, 252–253 (1886) (challenge to 
pretrial custody).  Other cases, involving convictions under unconstitu-
tional statutes and successive sentences, treated the judgments at issue
as void.  See, e.g., n. 1, supra; In re Medley, 134 U. S. 160, 173 (1890); In 
re Nielsen, 131 U. S. 176, 183–185 (1889).  And, as we have seen, 19th-
century decisions routinely sought to police the jurisdictional line.  Su-
pra, at 9, and n. 1.  In any event, what we have said remains true:  By
1953, habeas had slipped its traditional moorings.