Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/20-826_p702.pdf
Page Number: 36

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

7 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

federal habeas.  Wainwright, 433 U. S., at 79.  But the de-
cision, as the leading modern treatise on habeas explains,
“worked no revolution.”  1 Hertz & Liebman §2.4[d][viii], at 
73.  Rather, the principles that Brown “nicely catalogue[d]”
were already “long established, to anyone with the patience
to search them out from among the literally hundreds of in-
dividually unimportant cases in which they lay dispersed.” 
1 Hertz & Liebman, at 73–75.3 

So the majority should not be so sure that it really wishes 
judicially developed habeas doctrines to “return[ ] the Great 
Writ closer to its historic office,” ante, at 12—at least if that 
office  refers  to  the  longstanding  practice  of  the  federal 
courts  under  a  statute  broadly  authorizing  habeas  writs. 
The majority might then find itself bound to grant habeas
relief,  with  more  regularity  and  less  compunction  than  it 
would  prefer,  to  address  violations  of  convicted  prisoners’ 
constitutional rights.

But  let’s  be  frank:  My  view  of  the  history,  just  like  the
majority’s, has precious little—no, has nothing—to do with
resolving this case.  Although it is more entertaining to play 

—————— 

3 A mountain of other scholarship confirms the treatise’s account.  See, 
e.g., J. Siegel, 64 Ariz. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2022) (draft, at 26) (“[T]he 
distance  between  nineteenth  century  habeas  practices  and  those  ap-
proved in Brown v. Allen is much smaller than Justice Gorsuch is pre-
pared to acknowledge”); J. Wert, Habeas Corpus in America: The Politics 
of  Individual  Rights  142  (2011)  (Brown  “merely  formaliz[ed]  earlier
rules”); E. Freedman, Habeas Corpus: Rethinking the Great Writ of Lib-
erty 139 (2001) (“[O]ne can characterize Brown as a watershed only by
shutting one’s eyes” to developments “under way long before the case was
decided”);  A.  Clarke,  Habeas  Corpus:  The  Historical  Debate,  14 
N. Y. L. S. J. Human Rights 375, 433 (1998) (“Far from constituting a sea 
change,  [Brown]  merely  modernized  the  language  of  the  law”);  S.
Saltzburg,  Habeas  Corpus:  The  Supreme  Court  and  the  Congress,  44
Ohio St. L. J. 367, 382 (1983) (“Was [Brown] a departure from prior hold-
ings? The only fair answer is ‘no’ ”); G. Peller, In Defense of Federal Ha-
beas Corpus Relitigation, 16 Harv. Civ. Rights-Civ. Lib. L. Rev. 579, 644 
(1982) (Brown “did not break any new ground” respecting “the scope of 
federal habeas review of state court determinations of federal law”).