Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/10-895
Timestamp: 2017-09-22 08:28:56
Document Index: 171429523

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GONZALEZ v. THALER | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
GONZALEZ v. THALER ( )
After the intermediate state appellate court affirmed his state-court conviction, petitioner Gonzalez allowed his time for seeking discretionary review with the State’s highest court for criminal appeals to expire. Roughly six weeks later, the intermediate state appellate court issued its mandate. When Gonzalez subsequently sought federal habeas relief, the District Court dismissed Gonzalez’s petition as time barred by the 1-year statute of limitations in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). Under 28 U. S. C. §2244(d)(1)(A), state prisoners have one year to file federal habeas petitions running from “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review.” The District Court held that Gonzalez’s judgment had become “final” when his time for seeking discretionary review in the State’s highest court expired, and that running the limitations period from that date, his petition was untimely.
Under AEDPA, a habeas petitioner must obtain a certificate of appealability (COA) to appeal a district court’s final order in a habeas proceeding. 28 U. S. C. §2253(c)(1). The COA may issue only if the petitioner has made a “substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right,” §2253(c)(2), and “shall indicate which specific issue” satisfies that showing, §2253(c)(3). A Fifth Circuit judge granted Gonzalez a COA on the question whether his petition was timely. The issued COA, however, failed to “indicate” a constitutional issue.
The Fifth Circuit affirmed, holding that Gonzalez’s petition was untimely because the limitations period begins to run for petitioners who fail to appeal to a State’s highest court when the time for seeking further direct review in the state court expires. The Fifth Circuit did not mention, and the State did not raise, the §2253(c)(3) defect. When Gonzalez petitioned this Court for review, the State argued for the first time that the Fifth Circuit lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate Gonzalez’s appeal based on the §2253(c)(3) defect.
(a) A rule is jurisdictional “[i]f the Legislature clearly states that a threshold limitation on a statute’s scope shall count as jurisdictional,” Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500. Here, the only clear jurisdictional language in §2253(c) appears in §2253(c)(1). The parties agree that §2253(c)(1)’s plain terms make the issuance of a COA a jurisdictional prerequisite. The parties also agree that §2253(c)(2), which speaks only to when a COA may issue and does not contain §2253(c)(1)’s jurisdictional terms, is nonjurisdictional. It follows that §2253(c)(3) is also nonjurisdictional. Like §2253(c)(2), it reflects a threshold condition for issuing a COA, and “does not speak in jurisdictional terms or refer . . . to the jurisdiction of the [appeals] courts.” Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 515. Jurisdictional treatment also would thwart Congress’s intent in AEDPA “to eliminate delays in the federal habeas review process.” Holland v. Florida, 560 U. S. ___, ___. Once a judge has determined that a COA is warranted and resources are deployed in briefing and argument, the COA has fulfilled its gatekeeping function. Pp. 4−9.
(b) The State’s contrary arguments are unpersuasive. Section 2253(c)(3)’s cross-reference to §2253(c)(1) does not mean §2253(c)(3) can be read as part of §2253(c)(1), as Congress set off the requirements in distinct paragraphs with distinct terms. The word “shall” in §2253(c)(3), meanwhile, underscores the rule’s mandatory nature, but not all mandatory rules are jurisdictional. Nor does §2253(c)(3)’s mere proximity to other jurisdictional provisions turn a rule that speaks in nonjurisdictional terms into a jurisdictional hurdle. Finally, the Court rejects the State’s attempt to analogize a COA to a notice of appeal. Pp. 10−13.
2. For a state prisoner who does not seek review in a State’s highest court, the judgment becomes “final” for purposes of §2244(d)(1)(A) on the date that the time for seeking such review expires. Pp. 13−19.
(a) In Clay v. United States, 537 U. S. 522, the Court held that a federal conviction becomes final “when this Court affirms a conviction on the merits on direct review or denies a petition for a writ of certiorari,” or, if a petitioner does not seek certiorari, “when the time for filing a certiorari petition expires.” Id., at 527. In Jimenez v. Quarterman, 555 U. S. 113, the Court adopted Clay’s “most natural reading of the statutory text” in construing “the similar language of §2244(d)(1)(A).” Id., at 119. The Court made no mention of when Jimenez’s appeal concluded and held that his judgment became final when his time for seeking certiorari expired. Section 2244(d)(1)(A) thus consists of two prongs corresponding to two categories of petitioners. For petitioners pursuing direct review all the way to this Court, the judgment becomes final at the “conclusion of direct review,” when this Court affirms a conviction on the merits or denies certiorari. For all other petitioners, the judgment becomes final at the “expiration of the time for seeking such review,” when the time for pursuing direct review in this Court, or in state court, expires. Because Gonzalez did not appeal to the State’s highest court, his judgment became final when his time for seeking review with that court expired. Pp. 13–15.
(b) Gonzalez argues that courts should determine both prongs for every petitioner who does not seek certiorari, then start the 1-year clock from the latest of the two dates. Gonzalez further contends that when a petitioner does not seek certiorari, state law should define the “conclusion of direct review.” The words “latest of,” however, appear in §2244(d)(1), not §2244(d)(1)(A). Nothing in §2244(d)(1)(A) contemplates any conflict between the two prongs or instructs that the later of the two shall prevail. Gonzalez’s approach of scouring each State’s laws and cases to determine how the State defines finality, moreover, would contradict the uniform meaning of “conclusion of direct review” that Clay and Jimenez accepted. It will be a rare situation in which a delay in the mandate’s issuance is so severe as to prevent a petitioner from filing a federal habeas petition within a year or requesting a stay and abeyance. Finally, the Court rejects Gonzalez’s alternative argument that his petition is timely because it was filed within a year of when his time for seeking certiorari review expired. Pp. 15−19.
Gonzalez petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari. In its brief in opposition, the State argued for the first time that the Court of Appeals lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate Gonzalez’s appeal because the COA identified only a procedural issue, without also “indicat[ing]” a constitutional issue as required by §2253(c)(3). We granted certiorari to decide two questions, both of which implicate splits in authority: (1) whether the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to adjudicate Gonzalez’s appeal, notwithstanding the §2253(c)(3) defect; 1 and (2) whether Gonzalez’s habeas petition was time barred under §2244(d)(1) due to the date on which his judgment became final. 2 564 U. S. ___ (2011).
This Court has endeavored in recent years to “bring some discipline” to the use of the term “jurisdictional.” Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5). Recognizing our “less than meticulous” use of the term in the past, we have pressed a stricter distinction between truly jurisdictional rules, which govern “a court’s adjudicatory authority,” and nonjurisdictional “claim-processing rules,” which do not. Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U. S. 443–455 (2004). When a requirement goes to subject-matter jurisdiction, courts are obligated to consider sua sponte issues that the parties have disclaimed or have not presented. See United States v. Cotton, 535 U. S. 625, 630 (2002) . Subject-matter jurisdiction can never be waived or forfeited. The objections may be resurrected at any point in the litigation, and a valid objection may lead a court midway through briefing to dismiss a complaint in its entirety. “[M]any months of work on the part of the attorneys and the court may be wasted.” Henderson, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5). Courts, we have said, should not lightly attach those “drastic” consequences to limits Congress has enacted. Ibid.
We accordingly have applied the following principle: A rule is jurisdictional “[i]f the Legislature clearly states that a threshold limitation on a statute’s scope shall count as jurisdictional.” Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500, 515 (2006) . But if “Congress does not rank a statutory limitation on coverage as jurisdictional, courts should treat the restriction as nonjurisdictional.” Id., at 516. 3 That clear-statement principle makes particular sense in this statute, as we consider—against the backdrop of §2253(a)’s clear jurisdictional grant to the courts of appeals and §2253(b)’s clear limit on that grant—the extent to which Congress intended the COA process outlined in §2253(c) to further limit the courts of appeals’ jurisdiction over habeas appeals.
The parties also agree that §2253(c)(2) is nonjurisdictional. 4 That is for good reason. Section 2253(c)(2) speaks only to when a COA may issue—upon “a substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right.” It does not contain §2253(c)(1)’s jurisdictional terms. See Russello v. United States, 464 U. S. 16, 23 (1983) (“[W]here Congress includes particular language in one section of a statute but omits it in another section of the same Act, it is generally presumed that Congress acts intentionally . . .”). And it would be passing strange if, after a COA has issued, each court of appeals adjudicating an appeal were dutybound to revisit the threshold showing and gauge its “substantial[ity]” to verify its jurisdiction. That inquiry would be largely duplicative of the merits question before the court.
It is telling, moreover, that Congress placed the power to issue COAs in the hands of a “circuit justice or judge.” 5 It would seem somewhat counterintuitive to render a panel of court of appeals judges powerless to act on appeals based on COAs that Congress specifically empowered one court of appeals judge to grant. Indeed, whereas §2253(c)(2)’s substantial-showing requirement at least de- scribes a burden that “the applicant” seeking a COA bears, §2253(c)(3)’s indication requirement binds only the judge issuing the COA. Notably, Gonzalez advanced both the timeliness and Sixth Amendment issues in his application for a COA. A petitioner, having successfully obtained a COA, has no control over how the judge drafts the COA and, as in Gonzalez’s case, may have done everything required of him by law. That fact would only compound the “unfai[r] prejudice” resulting from the sua sponte dismissals and remands that jurisdictional treatment would entail. Henderson, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5). 6
Second, the State seizes on the word “shall” in §2253(c)(3), arguing that an omitted indication renders the COA no COA at all. But calling a rule nonjurisdictional does not mean that it is not mandatory or that a timely objection can be ignored. If a party timely raises the COA’s failure to indicate a constitutional issue, the court of appeals panel must address the defect by considering an amendment to the COA or remanding to the district judge for specification of the issues. 7 This Court, moreover, has long “rejected the notion that ‘all mandatory prescriptions, however emphatic, are . . . properly typed jurisdictional.’ ” Henderson, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9); see also Dolan v. United States, 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 5) (statute’s reference to “shall” alone does not render statutory deadline jurisdictional). Nothing in §2253(c)(3)’s prescription establishes that an omitted indication should remain an open issue throughout the case.
We reject this analogy. We construed the content requirements for notices of appeal as jurisdictional because we were “convinced that the harshness of our construction [wa]s ‘imposed by the legislature.’ ” Torres v. Oakland Scavenger Co., 487 U. S. 312, 318 (1988) . Rule 4, we noted, establishes mandatory time limits for filing a notice of appeal. Excusing a failure to name a party in a notice of appeal, in violation of Rule 3, would be “equivalent to permitting courts to extend the time for filing a notice of appeal,” in violation of Rule 4. Id., at 315. And “time limits for filing a notice of appeal have been treated as jurisdictional in American law for well over a century.” Bowles v. Russell, 551 U. S. 205, n. 2 (2007). Accordingly, the Advisory Committee Note “makes no distinction among the various requirements of Rule 3 and Rule 4,” treating them “as a single jurisdictional threshold.” Torres, 487 U. S., at 315; see also id., at 316 (“the Advisory Committee viewed the requirements of Rule 3 as jurisdictional in nature”). Here, we find no similar basis for treating the paragraphs of §2253(c) as a single jurisdictional threshold.
Moreover, in explaining why the naming requirement was jurisdictional in Torres, we reasoned that an unnamed party leaves the notice’s “intended recipient[s]”—the appellee and court—“unable to determine with certitude whether [that party] should be bound by an adverse judgment or held liable for costs or sanctions.” Id., at 318. The party could sit on the fence, await the outcome, and opt to participate only if it was favorable. That possibility of gamesmanship is not present here. Unlike the party who fails to submit a compliant notice of appeal, the habeas petitioner who obtains a COA cannot control how that COA is drafted. 8 And whereas a party’s failure to be named in a notice of appeal gives absolutely no “notice of [his or her] appeal,” a judge’s issuance of a COA reflects his or her judgment that the appeal should proceed and supplies the State with notice that the habeas litigation will continue.
We next consider whether Gonzalez’s habeas petition was time barred. AEDPA establishes a 1-year limitations period for state prisoners to file for federal habeas relief, which “run[s] from the latest of” four specified dates. 9 §2244(d)(1). This case concerns the first of those dates: “the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review.” §2244(d)(1)(A). The question before us is when the judgment becomes “final” if a petitioner does not appeal to a State’s highest court.
Second, Gonzalez misreads our precedents. Gonzalez asserts that in Jimenez, we made a later-in-time choice between the two prongs. That is mistaken. Rather, we chose between two “expiration” dates corresponding to different appeals: Jimenez initially failed to appeal to the Texas Court of Appeals and that appeal became final when his “time for seeking discretionary review . . . expired.” 555 U. S., at 117, 119. When Jimenez was later allowed to file an out-of-time appeal, he pursued appeals with both the Texas Court of Appeals and Texas CCA; the out-of-time appeal thus became final when his “[t]ime for seeking certiorari review . . . with this Court expired.” Id., at 116, 120. We adopted the out-of-time appeal’s date of finality over the initial appeal’s date of finality. Id., at 119–121. Critically, by deeming the initial appeal final at the expiration of time for seeking review in state court, and the out-of-time appeal final at the expiration of time for seeking certiorari in this Court, we reinforced Clay’s suggestion that the “expiration” prong governs all petitioners who do not pursue direct review all the way to this Court. 10
By contrast, Gonzalez urges us to scour each State’s laws and cases to determine how it defines finality for every petitioner who forgoes a state-court appeal. That ap- proach would usher in state-by-state definitions of the con- clusion of direct review. It would be at odds with the uniform definition we adopted in Clay and accepted in the §2244(d)(1)(A) context in Jimenez. And it would pose serious administrability concerns. Even if roughly “half of the States define the conclusion of direct review as the issuance of the mandate or similar process,” Brief for Petitioner 40, that still leaves half with either different rules or no settled rules at all. 11
Fourth, Gonzalez speculates that our reading will rob some habeas petitioners of the full 1-year limitations pe- riod. Gonzalez asserts that our reading starts the clock running from the date that his time for seeking Texas CCA review expired, even though, under Texas law, he could not file for state habeas relief until six weeks later, on the date the Texas Court of Appeals issued its mandate. Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 11.07, §3(a) (Vernon Supp. 2011). His inability to initiate state habeas proceedings during those six weeks, he argues, reduced his 1-year federal habeas filing period by six weeks. We expect, however, that it will be a rare situation where a petitioner confronting similar state laws faces a delay in the mandate’s issuance so excessive that it prevents him or her from filing a federal habeas petition within a year. 12 A petitioner who has exhausted his or her claims in state court need not await state habeas proceedings to seek federal habeas relief on those claims. To the extent a petitioner has had his or her federal filing period severely truncated by a delay in the mandate’s issuance and has unexhausted claims that must be raised on state habeas review, such a petitioner could file a request for a stay and abeyance from the federal district court. See Rhines v. Weber, 544 U. S. 269, 277 (2005) .
6 That fact also distinguishes the indication requirement from every “ ‘similar provisio[n]’ ” that the dissent claims we have deemed jurisdictional. Post, at 5–6. None of our cases addressing those provisions, moreover, recognized or relied on the sweeping “rule” that the dissent now invokes, whereby this Court should enforce as jurisdictional all “procedural conditions for appealing a case from one Article III court to another.” Ibid.; but see, e.g., post, at 6–7, n. 2 (conceding that the “rule” does not apply to criminal appeals); Becker v. Montgomery, 532 U. S. 757, 763 (2001) (failure to sign notice of appeal is a nonjurisdictional omission). All the cases, meanwhile, involved time limits (save one involving Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3(c)(1), which we address infra). In Bowles v. Russell, 551 U. S. 205 (2007) , we emphasized our “century’s worth of precedent” for treating statutory time limits on appeals as jurisdictional, id., at 209, n. 2, but even “Bowles did not hold . . . that all statutory conditions imposing a time limit should be con-sidered jurisdictional,” Reed Elsevier, 559 U. S., at ___ (slip op.,at 12). This case, in any event, involves a different type of procedural condition.
9 Title 28 U. S. C. §2244(d)(1) provides: “A 1-year period of limitation shall apply to an application for a writ of habeas corpus by a person in custody pursuant to the judgment of a State court. The limitation period shall run from the latest of— “(A) the date on which the judgment became final by the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the time for seeking such review; “(B) the date on which the impediment to filing an application created by State action in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States is removed, if the applicant was prevented from filing by such State action; “(C) the date on which the constitutional right asserted was initially recognized by the Supreme Court, if the right has been newly recognized by the Supreme Court and made retroactively applicable to cases on collateral review; or “(D) the date on which the factual predicate of the claim or claims presented could have been discovered through the exercise of due diligence.”
10 Gonzalez also argues that Lawrence v. Florida, 549 U. S. 327 (2007) , supports his focus on the state court’s issuance of the mandate because it referred to a mandate in determining when state postconviction proceedings were no longer pending. Lawrence, however, is inapposite. The case involved a different provision, 28 U. S. C. §2244(d)(2), which by its terms refers to “State” procedures.
RAFAEL ARRIAZA GONZALEZ, PETITIONER v. RICKTHALER, DIRECTOR, TEXAS DEPARTMENT OFCRIMINAL JUSTICE, CORRECTIONALINSTITUTIONS DIVISION
This case interprets two provisions of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). The first, 28 U. S. C. §2253(c), provides that a habeas peti-tioner must obtain a certificate of appealability (COA) to appeal a federal district court’s final order in a habeas proceeding. §2253(c)(1). The COA may issue only if the petitioner has made a “substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right,” §2253(c)(2), and “shall indicate which specific issue” satisfies that showing. §2253(c)(3). We hold that §2253(c)(3) is not a jurisdictional requirement. Accordingly, a judge’s failure to “indicate” the requisite constitutional issue in a COA does not deprive a court of appeals of subject-matter jurisdiction to adjudicate the habeas petitioner’s appeal.
Gonzalez petitioned this Court for a writ of certiorari. In its brief in opposition, the State argued for the first time that the Court of Appeals lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate Gonzalez’s appeal because the COA identified only a procedural issue, without also “indicat[ing]” a constitutional issue as required by §2253(c)(3). We granted certiorari to decide two questions, both of which implicate splits in authority: (1) whether the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction to adjudicate Gonzalez’s appeal, notwithstanding the §2253(c)(3) defect; 1 and (2) whether Gonzalez’s habeas petition was time barred under §2244(d)(1) due to thedate on which his judgment became final. 2 564 U. S. ___ (2011).
We first consider whether the Court of Appeals had juris-diction to adjudicate Gonzalez’s appeal.
It follows that §2253(c)(3) is nonjurisdictional as well. Like §2253(c)(2), it too reflects a threshold condition for the issuance of a COA—the COA’s indication of “which specific issue or issues satisfy the showing required by paragraph (2).” It too “does not speak in jurisdictional terms or refer in any way to the jurisdiction of the [appeals] courts.” Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 515 (internal quo-tation marks omitted). The unambiguous jurisdictional terms of §§2253(a), (b), and (c)(1) show that Congress would have spoken in clearer terms if it intended §2253(c)(3) to have similar jurisdictional force. Instead, the contrast underscores that the failure to obtain a COA is jurisdictional, while a COA’s failure to indicate an issue is not. A defective COA is not equivalent to the lack of any COA.
It is telling, moreover, that Congress placed the power to issue COAs in the hands of a “circuit justice or judge.” 5 It would seem somewhat counterintuitive to render a panel of court of appeals judges powerless to act on appeals based on COAs that Congress specifically empowered one court of appeals judge to grant. Indeed, whereas §2253(c)(2)’s substantial-showing requirement at least de-scribes a burden that “the applicant” seeking a COAbears, §2253(c)(3)’s indication requirement binds only the judge issuing the COA. Notably, Gonzalez advanced both the timeliness and Sixth Amendment issues in his application for a COA. A petitioner, having successfully obtained a COA, has no control over how the judge drafts the COA and, as in Gonzalez’s case, may have done everything required of him by law. That fact would only compound the “unfai[r] prejudice” resulting from the sua sponte dismissals and remands that jurisdictional treatment would entail. Henderson, 562 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 5). 6
We now make clear what we suggested in those cases: The text of §2244(d)(1)(A), which marks finality as of “the conclusion of direct review or the expiration of the timefor seeking such review,” consists of two prongs. Each prong—the “conclusion of direct review” and the “expiration of the time for seeking such review”—relates to a distinct category of petitioners. For petitioners who pursue direct review all the way to this Court, the judgment becomes final at the “conclusion of direct review”—when this Court affirms a conviction on the merits or denies a petition for certiorari. For all other petitioners, the judgment becomes final at the “expiration of the time for seeking such review”—when the time for pursuing directreview in this Court, or in state court, expires. We thus agree with the Court of Appeals that because Gonzalez did not appeal to the State’s highest court, his judgment became final when his time for seeking review with the State’s highest court expired.
First, Gonzalez lacks a textual anchor for his later-in-time approach. The words “latest of” do not appear anywhere in §2244(d)(1)(A). Rather, they appear in §2244(d)(1) and refer to the “latest of” the dates in subparagraphs (A), (B), (C), and (D)—the latter three of which are inapplicable here. Nothing in §2244(d)(1)(A) contemplates any conflict between the “conclusion of direct review” and the “expiration of the time for seeking such review,” much less instructs that the later of the two shall prevail.
By contrast, Gonzalez urges us to scour each State’s laws and cases to determine how it defines finality for every petitioner who forgoes a state-court appeal. That ap-proach would usher in state-by-state definitions of the con-clusion of direct review. It would be at odds with the uniform definition we adopted in Clay and accepted in the §2244(d)(1)(A) context in Jimenez. And it would pose serious administrability concerns. Even if roughly “half of the States define the conclusion of direct review as the issuance of the mandate or similar process,” Brief for Petitioner 40, that still leaves half with either different rules or no settled rules at all. 11
Fourth, Gonzalez speculates that our reading will rob some habeas petitioners of the full 1-year limitations pe-riod. Gonzalez asserts that our reading starts the clock running from the date that his time for seeking Texas CCA review expired, even though, under Texas law, he could not file for state habeas relief until six weeks later, on the date the Texas Court of Appeals issued its mandate. Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 11.07, §3(a) (Vernon Supp. 2011). His inability to initiate state habeas proceedings during those six weeks, he argues, reduced his 1-year federal habeas filing period by six weeks. We expect, however, that it will be a rare situation where a petitioner confronting similar state laws faces a delay in the mandate’s issuance so excessive that it prevents him or her from filing a federal habeas petition within a year. 12 A petitioner who has exhausted his or her claims in state court need not await state habeas proceedings to seek federal habeas relief on those claims. To the extent a petitioner has had his or her federal filing period severely truncated by a delay in the mandate’s issuance and has unexhausted claims that must be raised on state habeas review, such a petitioner could file a request for a stay and abeyance from the federal district court. See Rhines v. Weber, 544 U. S. 269, 277 (2005) .
That is doubtless true, and it demonstrates the hollowness of the Court’s assurance that “calling a rule nonjurisdictional does not mean that it is not mandatory or that a timely objection can be ignored,” ante, at 10. That statement is true enough as a general proposition: Calling the numerosity requirement in Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U. S. 500 (2006) , nonjurisdictional, for example, did not eliminate it, where protest was made, as a continuing mandatory requirement for relief on the merits, id., at 516. Even the time-of-filing requirement in Eberhart v. United States, 546 U. S. 12 (2005) (per curiam), continued to have “bite” even though it was held nonjurisdictional: It prevented relief when the failure to observe it was prop-erly challenged, id., at 19. But the Court has managed to create today a “mandatory” requirement which—precisely because it will not be worth the trouble of going back—has no practical, real-world effect. 1 What is the consequence when the issuing judge, over properly preserved objection, produces a COA like the one here, which does not contain the required opinion? None whatever. The habeas petitioner already has what he wants, argument before the court of appeals. The government, for its part, is either confident in its view that there has been no substantial showing of denial of a constitutional right—in which case it is just as easy (if not easier) to win before three judges as it is before one; or else it is not—in which case a crusade to enforce §2253(c) is likely to yield nothing but additional litigation expenses. As for the three-judge panel of the court of appeals, it remains free, as always, to choose whichever mandatory-but-not-jurisdictional basis it wishes for resolving the case. Cf. Steel Co. v. Citizens for Better Environment, 523 U. S. 83–94 (1998). Why not choose the one that is sure to be final and that might avoid embarrassing a colleague? No one has any interest in enforcing the “mandatory” requirement. Which is perhaps why, as I proceed to discuss, mandatory requirements for court-to-court appeal are always made jurisdictional.
As the Court acknowledges, “ ‘context, including this Court’s interpretation of similar provisions in many years past, is relevant to whether a statute ranks a requirement as jurisdictional.’ ” Ante, at 6, n. 3 (quoting Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 13)). Thus, we have said that a requirement prescribed as a condition to obtaining judicial review of agency action is quite different (nonjurisdictional) from a requirement prescribed as a condition to appeal from one court to another (jurisdictional). See Henderson, 562 U. S., at ___ – ___ (slip op., at 7–8). We have always—always, without exception—held that procedural conditions for appealing a case from one Article III court to another are jurisdic-tional. When an appeal is “not taken within the time prescribed by law,” the “Court of Appeals [is] without juris-diction.” George v. Victor Talking Machine Co., 293 U. S. 377, 379 (1934) (per curiam); see also United States v. Robinson, 361 U. S. 220–230 (1960). When a party’s name is not listed in the notice of appeal, as the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure require, the court has no jurisdiction over that party’s appeal. Torres v. Oakland Scavenger Co., 487 U. S. 312–315 (1988).
When this Court reviewed cases by writ of error, the law re quired that the lower-court record be filed with the Court “before the end of the term next succeeding the issue of the writ.” Edmonson v. Bloomshire, 7 Wall. 306, 309 (1869). The Court routinely dismissed cases that did not comply with that requirement. See, e.g., Mesa v. United States, 2 Black 721, 721–722 (1863) (per curiam); Edmonson, supra, at 309–310; Steamer Virginia v. West, 19 How. 182, 183 (1857). The same jurisdictional treatment was accorded to failure to serve notice on the defendant in error within the succeeding term, see, e.g., United States v. Curry, 6 How. 106, 112–113 (1848); Villabolos v. United States, 6 How. 81, 88, 91 (1848), and to failure to file the writ of error with the clerk of the lower court, see, e.g., Credit Co. v. Arkansas Central R. Co., 128 U. S. 258, 261 (1888) ; Scarborough v. Pargoud, 108 U. S. 567 (1883) . Today, when a petition for certiorari in a civil case is not filed within the time prescribed by 28 U. S. C. §2101(c), this Court lacks jurisdiction. Federal Election Comm’n v. NRA Political Victory Fund, 513 U. S. 88, 90 (1994) (citing Missouri v. Jenkins, 495 U. S. 33, 45 (1990) ); see also Matton S. S. Co. v. Murphy, 319 U. S. 412, 415 (1943) (per curiam). 2
So strict has been the rule enforcing as jurisdictional those requirements attached to court-from-court appeals, that we have applied it to a requirement contained in a statute not even addressed to the courts. Section 518(a) of Title 28 charges the Solicitor General with “conduct[ing] and argu[ing] suits and appeals in the Supreme Court . . . in which the United States is interested.” We held that, absent independent statutory authority, an agency’s petition for certiorari filed without authorization from the Solicitor General does not suffice to invoke our jurisdiction. NRA Political Victory Fund, supra, at 98–99. 3
The last version of this statute, before it was amended to its current form in AEDPA, provided for issuance of the certificate of probable cause by a circuit judge instead of a justice. See §2253, 62Stat. 967 (codified at 28 U. S. C. §2253). Even applying the Court’s simplistic rule that the jurisdictional restriction must be contained in the very same paragraph as the procedural requirement, there is no doubt that under this statute a judge’s certification that there was probable cause for an appeal was jurisdictional. See, e.g., Ex parte Patrick, 212 U. S. 555 (1908) (per cu-riam); Bilik v. Strassheim, 212 U. S. 551 (1908) (per cu-riam). There is no reason whatever to think that Congress rendered the statement of opinion unnecessary for jurisdiction by (1) extending the requirement for it to §2255 proceedings; (2) requiring the opinion to address a more specific point (not just probable cause for an appeal but presence of an issue presenting a “substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right”) 4 ; and (3) giving the document in which the judge is required to express the opinion a name (“certificate of appealability”)—so that now a “certificate of appealability” without opinion will suffice. Neither any one of these steps, nor all of them combined, suggest elimination of jurisdictional status for the required expression of opinion. 5 It would be an en-tirely strange way of achieving that result. It was not a strange way, however, of dividing the now more complex and lengthy provision into manageable subsections.
In addition to the fact that conditions attached to court-to-court appeal have always been held jurisdictional, and the fact that this statute’s predecessor was held to be so, we have considered, and found to be jurisdictional, a statute presenting precisely what is at issue here: a provision governing court-to-court appeals which made particular content a required element of a document that the statute said was necessary for jurisdiction; and which did that in a separate section that “excluded the jurisdictional terms,” ante, at 10. That case flatly contradicts today’s holding. In Torres v. Oakland Scavenger Co., 487 U. S. 312, we dealt with Rule 3(c)(1) of the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. Rule 3(a) of those Rules makes a notice of appeal necessary to appellate jurisdiction—just as §2253(c)(1) makes a certificate of appealability necessary. And Rule 3(c)(1), which, like §2253(c)(3), does not contain jurisdictional language, says what the requisite notice of appeal must contain—just as §2253(c)(3) says what the requisite certificate of appealability must contain:
The Court claims that the jurisdictional consequences of Rule 3(c) were “ ‘imposed by the legislature,’ ” ante, at 12 (quoting Torres, supra, at 318), which according to the Court’s analysis “ ‘clearly state[d],’ ” ante, at 6 (quoting Arbaugh, 546 U. S., at 515), that Rule 3(c) is jurisdictional. But the legislature there did precisely what it did here: made a particular document necessary to jurisdiction and then specified what that document must contain. 6 I certainly agree that that is a clear statement that a document with the requisite content is necessary to jurisdiction. But the Court does not. So to distinguish Torres it has to find something else in Rule 3(c) that provided a “clear statement” of what “Congress intended,” ante, at 6–7. The best it can come up with, ante, at 12, is an unclear statement, and that not from Congress but from Advisory Committee Notes referred to in the Torres opinion. Such Notes are (of course) “the product of the Advisory Committee, and not Congress,” and “they are transmitted to Congress before the rule is enacted into law.” United States v. Vonn, 535 U. S. 55, n. 6 (2002). They are, in other words, a species of legislative history. I know of no precedent for the proposition that legislative history can satisfy a clear-statement requirement imposed by this Court’s opinions. Does today’s distinguishing of Torres mean that legislative history can waive the sovereign immunity of the United States? See United States v. Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U. S. 30–34 (1992). Or abrogate the sovereign immunity of the States? See Atascadero State Hos-pital v. Scanlon, 473 U. S. 234, 242 (1985) . Or give retroactive effect to new legislation? See Greene v. United States, 376 U. S. 149, 160 (1964) . Or foreclose review of agency actions? See Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner, 387 U. S. 136, 141 (1967) . Today’s opinion is in this respect a time-bomb.
To say that timely filing of a notice of appeal is jurisdictional, and that placing within the notice of appeal what Rule 3 says it must contain is “of the utmost importance,” does not remotely add up to a clear statement that placing within the notice of appeal what Rule 3 says it must contain is jurisdictional. There is simply no principled basis for saying that Torres satisfies the “clear-statement principle,” ante, at 6, except the commonsense notion that when a document is made jurisdictional, and the required contents of that document specified, a document that does not contain those contents cannot confer jurisdiction. 7
The Court holds that the requirement imposed by paragraph (c)(2) (that a COA may issue “only if the applicant has made a substantial showing of the denial of a constitution-al right”) is not jurisdictional, and says that “[i]t follows that §2253(c)(3) is nonjurisdictional as well.” Ante, at 7. I need not reach the issue whether (c)(2) is jurisdictional—though it seems to me that the Court disposes rather summarily of the Solicitor General’s view that it is. And I need not confront the Court with the back-at-you argument that if (c)(3) is jurisdictional (as I think) then (c)(2) is as well. For whether one runs it backwards or forwards, the argument is a bad one. Assuming that (c)(2) is nonjurisdictional, it does not at all “follow” that (c)(3) is nonjurisdictional as well. Paragraph (c)(3) is jurisdictional not because it is located in subsection (c), but because it describes the required content of a COA. Paragraph (c)(2) does not; it sets forth the criterion for a COA’s issuance. A judge may apply that criterion erroneously but still produce a COA that (as paragraph (c)(3) requires) “indicate[s] which specific issue or issues satisfy the showing required by paragraph (2).” It no more follows that the erroneousness of the judge’s indication must destroy the jurisdiction that the COA creates, than it followed under the predecessor statute that the erroneousness of the certification of probable cause for an appeal destroyed the jurisdiction that the certification created. 8 The two issues are quite separate: what the judge must find, and what the COA (or certification) must contain.
Terminology is destiny. Today’s holding, and the erosion of our prior jurisprudence that will perhaps follow upon it, is foreshadowed and facilitated by the unfortunate terminology with which we have chosen to accompany our campaign to “bring some discipline” to determinations of jurisdiction. We have said that the universe of rules placing limitations upon the courts is divided into (1) “claims processing rules,” and (2) jurisdiction-removing rules. Unless our prior jurisprudence is to be repudiated, that is a false dichotomy. The requirement that the unsuccessful litigant file a timely notice of appeal, for example, is (if the term is to have any meaning) a claims-processing rule, ordering the process by which claims are adjudicated. Yet as discussed above, that, and all procedures that must be followed to proceed from one court to another, have always been deemed jurisdictional. The proper dichotomy is between claims processing rules that are jurisdictional, and those that are not. To put it otherwise suggests a test for jurisdiction that is not to be found in our cases. 9
2 Since the time limits for filing petitions for certiorari in criminal cases are “not enacted by Congress but [are] promulgated by this Court under authority of Congress to prescribe rules,” we have held that they may “be relaxed by the Court in the exercise of its discretion when the ends of justice so require.” Schacht v. United States, 398 U. S. 58, 64 (1970) . The indication requirement of §2253(c)(3), of course, has been “imposed by the legislature and not by the judicial process.” Schiavone v. Fortune, 477 U. S. 21, 31 (1986) .
3 The Court cites Becker v. Montgomery, 532 U. S. 757 (2001) , as a counter-example. Ante, at 9, n. 6. We held there that an appellant’s failure to sign his notice of appeal, see Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 11(a), within the time prescribed for filing a notice of appeal, see Fed. Rule App. Proc. 4(a)(1), did not require dismissal where the notice itself was timely filed. 532 U. S., at 762–763. We did not hold, however, that the signing requirement was nonjurisdictional; we had no occasion to do so. We held that Becker had complied with Civil Rule 11(a) because the error was “ ‘corrected promptly after being called to [his] attention,’ ” id., at 764 (quoting Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 11(a)).
4 The Court believes that the fact that this “new requirement . . . has no predecessor provision” suggests that it is nonjurisdictional. Ante, at 6, n. 3. To begin with, it is not that new, and it has a predecessor provision; it merely adds detail to the jurisdictional opinion that was previously required. But even if the requirement were entirely unprecedented, when it appears within a textual structure that makes it jurisdictional (as our opinion in Torres v. Oakland Scavenger Co., 487 U. S. 312 (1988) , held, see infra, at 10–12), it would be an entirely unprecedented jurisdictional provision.
8 We held in Nowakowski v. Maroney, 386 U. S. 542, 543 (1967) (per curiam), that “when a district judge grants [a certificate of probable cause], the court of appeals must grant an appeal . . . and proceed to a disposition of the appeal in accord with its ordinary procedure.” See also Carafas v. LaVallee, 391 U. S. 234, 242 (1968) (Nowakowski requires “that the appeal [be] considered on its merits . . . in cases where a certificate of probable cause has been granted”).
9 It may well be that what I have called a false dichotomy was indeed meant to revise our jurisprudence. In Kontrick v. Ryan, 540 U. S. 443, 455 (2004) , we said by way of dictum the following: “Clarity would be facilitated if courts and litigants used the label ‘jurisdictional’ not for claim-processing rules, but only for prescriptions delineating the classes of cases (subject-matter jurisdiction) and the persons (personal jurisdiction) falling within a court’s adjudicatory authority.” Unless an appeal lacking a timely filing of a notice of appeal can be considered one that falls outside the appellate court’s “subject-matter jurisdiction” (which would be an odd usage), Kontrick’s dictum effectively announced today’s decision, the overruling of Torres and Browder v. Director, Dept. of Corrections of Ill., 434 U. S. 257 (1978) , and the elimination of jurisdictional treatment for all procedural requirements for appeal. That the announcement has not been heeded is demonstrated by Bowles v. Russell, 551 U. S. 205 (2007) (decided after Kontrick), which (over the dissent of the author of Kontrick) reaffirmed Browder. I confess error in joining the quoted portion of Kontrick.
2 Since the time limits for filing petitions for certiorari in criminal cases are “not enacted by Congress but [are] promulgated by this Court under authority of Congress to prescribe rules,” we have held that they may “be relaxed by the Court in the exercise of its discretion when the ends of justice so require.” Schacht v. United States, 398 U. S. 58, 64 (1970) . The indication requirement of §2253(c)(3), of course, has been “imposed by the legislature and not by the judicial process.” Schiavone v. Fortune, 477 U. S. 21, 31 (1986).