Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 453.0

529US2

Unit: $U46

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378

WILLIAMS v. TAYLOR

Opinion of Stevens, J.

nothing about “reasonable judges,” presumably because all,
or virtually all, such judges occasionally commit error; they
make decisions that in retrospect may be characterized as
“unreasonable.”
Indeed, it is most unlikely that Congress
would deliberately impose such a requirement of unanimity
on federal judges. As Congress is acutely aware, reasonable
lawyers and lawgivers regularly disagree with one another.
Congress surely did not intend that the views of one such
judge who might think that relief is not warranted in a
particular case should always have greater weight than the
contrary, considered judgment of several other reasonable
judges.

The inquiry mandated by the amendment relates to the
way in which a federal habeas court exercises its duty to
decide constitutional questions; the amendment does not
alter the underlying grant of jurisdiction in § 2254(a), see
n. 7, supra.10 When federal judges exercise their federal-
question jurisdiction under the “judicial Power” of Article
III of the Constitution, it is “emphatically the province and
duty” of those judges to “say what the law is.” Marbury v.
Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803). At the core of this

10 Indeed, Congress roundly rejected an amendment to the bill eventu-
ally adopted that directly invoked the text of the jurisdictional grant, 28
U. S. C. § 2254(a) (providing that the federal courts “shall entertain an
application for a writ of habeas corpus” (emphasis added)). The amend-
ment read: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an application for
a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of a person in custody pursuant to a
judgment or order of a State court shall not be entertained by a court of
the United States unless the remedies in the courts of the State are inade-
141
quate or ineffective to test the legality of the person’s detention.”
Cong. Rec. 14991 (1995) (amendment of Sen. Kyl) (emphasis added).
In
speaking against the Kyl amendment, Senator Specter (a key proponent
of the eventual habeas reform) explained that when “dealing with the
question of jurisdiction of the Federal courts to entertain questions on
Federal issues, on constitutional issues, I believe it is necessary that the
Federal courts retain that jurisdiction as a constitutional matter.”
Id.,
at 15050.