Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-857_4357.pdf
Page Number: 41

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

9 

JACKSON, J., dissenting 

precedent, legal innocence claims fit that category.  See Da-
vis, 417 U. S., at 346 (“There can be no room for doubt” that
“conviction and punishment . . . for an act that the law does 
not make criminal” “ ‘inherently results in a complete mis-
carriage of justice’ ”); see also Bousley v. United States, 523 
U. S. 614, 623–624 (1998).

These background principles relate to the successive pe-
tition that Jones seeks to bring here as follows.  If the ma-
jority  is  right  that  (by  virtue  of  §2255(h))  prisoners  like 
Jones are now unable to bring a successive §2255 petition 
to make the same kind of legal innocence claim that they 
could have brought prior to AEDPA, then Congress’s enact-
ment  of  §2255(h)  has  dramatically  altered  the  legal  land-
scape in a manner that seems, at best, inconsistent with its
original  intent.  To  repeat:  The  saving  clause  expresses  a 
congressional intent to maintain equivalence between what 
a prisoner could claim before and after §2255(h); yet under
the majority’s reading, §2255(h)’s “second or successive” bar 
would effectively operate to preclude successive legal inno-
cence claims—shrinking the universe of previously availa-
ble  claims—the  opposite  of  what  Congress  set  out  to  do 
when it set up §2255.

In  my  view,  that  is  where  the  saving  clause  comes  in. 
Reading the saving clause to perform its normal, intended
function of “saving” previously available claims solves this 
problem,  because  it  allows  prisoners  who  could  have
brought  a  claim  prior  to  the  enactment  of  AEDPA  (like
Jones) to file a habeas petition to the extent that §2255 now 
precludes  such  a  filing  under  that  particular  statutory 
mechanism.  Thus, interpreting §2255(e)’s “inadequate and 
ineffective” language to permit the filing of a habeas peti-
tion  that  raises  a  legal  innocence  claim  in  these  circum-
stances seems perfectly consistent with Congress’s intent. 
This understanding of the saving clause also explains the
clause’s  application—or,  more  precisely,  its  inapplicabil-
ity—to  the  types  of  claims  specifically  mentioned  in