Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 307.0

524US1

Unit: $U85

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262

HOHN v. UNITED STATES

Scalia, J., dissenting

this Court, see Act of Mar. 10, 1908, ch. 76, 35 Stat. 40.
In
1925, this requirement was extended to intermediate appel-
late proceedings, see Act of Feb. 13, 1925, ch. 229, §§ 6(d), 13,
43 Stat. 940, 942. Before 1925, this Court readily concluded
it had no jurisdiction over appeals brought before it in the
absence of a certiﬁcate, see, e. g., Bilik v. Strassheim, 212
U. S. 551 (1908); Ex parte Patrick, 212 U. S. 555 (1908), and
House interpreted the 1925 amendment to produce the same
effect in the courts of appeals and, consequently, in this
Court under the predecessor to § 1254(1). Quite obviously,
with House on the books—neither overruled nor even cited
in the later opinions that the Court claims “disregarded” it—
Congress presumably anticipated that § 102 of AEDPA
would be interpreted in the same manner.3
In yet another
striking departure from our ordinary practice, the Court
qualiﬁes the rule that statutes are deemed to adopt the ex-
tant holdings of this Court, see Keene Corp. v. United States,
508 U. S. 200, 212 (1993): They will not be deemed to adopt
them, the Court says, when legal commentators “question

.

. for a writ of certiorari.”

3 The Court points to the fact that another provision of AEDPA, which
requires court of appeals authorization before a state prisoner can ﬁle a
second or successive habeas petition in district court, speciﬁcally states
that the denial of the authorization “shall not be appealable and shall not
28 U. S. C.
be the subject of a petition .
§ 2244(b)(3)(E) (1994 ed., Supp. II). This provision, the Court says, would
be rendered “superﬂuous” if we followed House, ante, at 249. That is
not so. Section 2244(b)(3) addresses whether there will be district-court
consideration of a second or successive petition at all, not whether the
district court’s consideration may be reviewed by an appellate court.
Only the latter is covered by the holding of House.
It is true enough that
the reasoning of House,
if carried over to the other question, would
produce the same result; but Congress’s speciﬁcation of that result when
there is no Supreme Court holding precisely in point would more ac-
Indeed, the greater
curately be described as cautious than superﬂuous.
relevance of § 2244(b)(3) to the question before us is this: It would be ex-
ceedingly strange to foreclose certiorari review of the denial of all federal
intervention, as that provision does, while according certiorari review of
the denial of appeal from the federal district court to the court of appeals.