Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 303

524US1

Unit: $U85

[09-14-00 16:49:41] PAGES PGT: OPIN

258

HOHN v. UNITED STATES

Scalia, J., dissenting

(CA7 1997).
It is this unique screening function that distin-
guishes a COA from the jurisdictional issues discussed by
the Court: Section 102 of AEDPA prevents petitioner’s case
from entering the Court of Appeals at all in the absence of a
COA, whereas other jurisdictional determinations are made
after a case is in the Court of Appeals (even if the case is
later dismissed because of jurisdictional defects), ante, at 246–
249. See Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U. S. 397, 403, n. 3 (1970)
(a court always has jurisdiction to determine its jurisdiction).
The Court’s only response to these arguments is that they
are foreclosed by our precedent, since we decided an analo-
gous issue in Ex parte Quirin, 317 U. S. 1 (1942). Ante, at
(The Court displays no appreciation of the delicious
246.
irony involved in its insistence upon hewing to an allegedly
analogous decision while overruling the case directly in
point, House.) Quirin held that a petition for habeas corpus
constituted the institution of a suit, and that it was not neces-
sary for the writ to issue for the matter to be considered a
case or controversy.
317 U. S., at 24. Quirin relied upon
our decision in Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wall. 2, 110–113 (1866),
which reasoned that a petition for habeas corpus is a suit
because the petitioner seeks “ ‘that remedy which the law
affords him’ ” to recover his liberty.
Id., at 113 (quoting
Weston v. City Council of Charleston, 2 Pet. 449, 464 (1829)).
Petitioner’s request for § 2255 relief is analogous to a petition
for habeas corpus, but his request for a COA is of a wholly
different nature. That is no “remedy” for any harm, but a
threshold procedural requirement that petitioner must meet
in order to carry his § 2255 suit to the appellate stage. That
is why the Court in House, decided less than three years
after Quirin, did not treat the application for a certiﬁcate as
a separate case but did recognize the petition for habeas cor-
pus as a case even though it was decided without a hearing
324 U. S., at 43.
or a call for a return.
I have described above why House was entirely correct,
but a few words are in order concerning the inappropriate-