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Page Number: 14

10 

BROWN v. DAVENPORT 

Opinion of the Court 

state  court  may  reject  the  petitioner’s  claims  after  a  fair 
hearing.  No appellate court, including this one, may see fit 
to reverse that final judgment.  Yet still, Brown suggested,
a  federal  district  court  approaching  the  same  case  years 
later  should  be  free  to  decide  de novo  whether  the  state-
court  proceedings  “resulted  in  a  satisfactory  conclusion” 
and to issue habeas relief if that conclusion is found want-
ing.  Id., at 463; see also Wright, 505 U. S., at 287–288 (plu-
rality  opinion).  The  traditional  distinction  between  juris-
dictional defects and mere errors in adjudication no longer 
restrained federal habeas courts.  Full-blown constitutional 
error correction became the order of the day.

This shift did not go unnoticed.  Concurring only in the
result, Justice Jackson contended that the Court’s decision 
“trivializ[ed]  . . .  the  writ”  and  was  inconsistent  with  the 
presumption of finality that traditionally attached to crim-
inal convictions.  Brown, 344 U. S., at 536, 543.  He warned, 
too, that the Court’s ruling threatened “haystack[s]” of new 
habeas petitions—and that federal courts would struggle to 
identify  the  meritorious  “needle[s]”  among  them.    Id.,  at 
537.  Over the ensuing years, that prediction proved presci-
ent:  Federal courts struggled with an exploding caseload of 
habeas  petitions  from state  prisoners.    See, e.g.,  Schneck-
loth v. Bustamonte, 412 U. S. 218, 274, n. 37 (1973) (Powell, 
J.,  concurring)  (“In  1971  . . .  state  prisoners  alone  filed
7,949 petitions for habeas in federal district courts, over 14 
times the number filed when Mr. Justice Jackson voiced his 
misgivings”);  B. Garrett  &  L.  Kovarsky,  Federal  Habeas 
Corpus 135–136 (2013) (documenting the rise of habeas fil-
ings by state prisoners).2 

—————— 

2 The dissent does not dispute that habeas courts refused to engage in
full-blown constitutional error correction at the time of the founding.  But 
it contends the practice became the norm by some (unspecified) point in 
the “mid-19th century.”  Post, at 2–3 (opinion of KAGAN, J.).  The dissent’s 
revisionist  account  contradicts  this  Court’s  understanding.    See,  e.g.,