This is an overview of the most prominent features of federal habeas corpus law. Federal habeas corpus as we know it is by and large a procedure under which a court may review the legality of an individual's incarceration. It is most often invoked after conviction and the exhaustion of the ordinary means of appeal. It is at once the last refuge of scoundrels and the last hope of the innocent. It is an intricate weave of statute and case law whose reach has flowed and ebbed over time. Prior to enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), the most recent substantial recasting of federal habeas law and the Supreme Court cases that immediately preceded it, it was said that federal habeas was "the most controversial and friction producing issue in the relation between federal and state courts.... Commentators [were] critical, ... federal judges [were] unhappy, ... state courts resented [it], . . [and] prisoners thrive[d] on it as a form of occupational therapy.... " The AEDPA was passed and yet the debate goes on. Judges, academics and political figures regularly urge that the boundaries for federal habeas be readjusted; some would make it more readily available; others would limit access to it. Debate has been particularly intense in capital punishment cases. There, unlike most other cases, the decisions of the state courts stand unexecuted while they await completion of federal habeas corpus proceedings; there, unlike most other cases, an erroneously executed sentence is beyond any semblance of correction or compensation. The AEDPA offers states expeditious habeas procedures in capital cases under certain circumstances; no state has yet been able to take full advantage of the offer, and as a consequence, Congress adjusted the method of determining qualification in the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act. An unsuccessful endeavor to curtail access of Guantanamo Bay detainees to habeas relief provided the Supreme Court with an opportunity to further explain the scope of Congressional authority over habeas jurisdiction under the suspension clause. At early common law, much of the business of the courts began with the issuance of one of several writs, many of which have survived to this day. The writs were a series of written order forms, issued by the court in the name of the king, commanding the individual to whom they were addressed to return the writ to the court for the purpose stated in the writ. The purpose was generally reflected in the name of the writ itself. Thus for example, a subpoena ad testificandum was a command to return the writ to the court at a specified time and place, "sub poena," that is, "under penalty" for failure to comply, and "ad testificandum" that is, "for the purpose of testifying." Just as the writs of subpoena have been shortened in common parlance to "subpoena," references to the several writs of habeas corpus were shortened. The habeas corpus writs were all issued by the courts in the name of the king and addressed to one of the king's officials or a lower court. The writs commanded the officers of the Crown to appear before the court with the "corpus" ("body") of an individual named in the writ, whom "habeas" ("you have" or "you are holding"), for the purpose stated in the writ. Thus for instance, the writ of habeas corpora juratorum commanded the sheriff to appear before the court having with him or holding the bodies of potential jurors. By the colonial period, "habeas corpus" had come to be understood as those writs available to a prisoner, held without trial or bail or pursuant to the order of a court without jurisdiction, ordering his jailer to appear with the prisoner before a court of general jurisdiction and to justify the confinement. Colonial America was well acquainted with habeas corpus and with occasional suspensions of the writ. The drafters of the United States Constitution, after enumerating the powers of Congress, inserted the limitation that "the privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." The Act that created the federal court system empowered federal judges to issues writs of habeas corpus "and other writs not specially provided for by statute, which may be necessary for the exercise of their respective jurisdictions.... [a]nd ... to grant writs of habeas corpus for the purpose of an inquiry into the cause of commitment." The power was limited, however, in that "writs of habeas corpus shall in no case extend to prisoners in gaol, unless where they are in custody, under or by colour of the authority of the United States, or are committed for trial before some court of the same, or are necessary to be brought into court to testify." The Supreme Court further clarified federal habeas corpus law when in Ex parte Bollman , 8 U.S.(4 Cranch) 75 (1807), it held that the power of the federal courts to issue the writ was limited to the authority vested in them by statute. The courts had no common law or inherent authority to issue writs of habeas corpus. While the common law might provide an understanding of the dimensions of the writ, the power to issue it depended upon and was limited by the authority which Congress by statute vested in the courts, id . at 93. Consistent with the common law, the writ was available to those confined by federal officials without trial or admission to bail, but was not available to contest the validity of confinement pursuant to conviction by a federal court of competent jurisdiction, even one whose judgment was in error. Congress expanded the authority it had given the federal courts in response to the anticipated state arrest of federal officers attempting to enforce an unpopular tariff in 1833 and again in 1842 in response to British protest over the American trial of one of its nationals. The writ was made available to state prisoners held because of "any act done, or omitted to be done, in pursuance of a law of the United States," and to state prisoners who were foreign nationals and claimed protection of the Act of State doctrine. The federal writ otherwise remained unavailable for prisoners held under state authority rather than the authority of the United States. In 1867, Congress substantially increased the jurisdiction of federal courts to issue the writ by authorizing its issuance "in all cases," state or federal, "where any person may be restrained of his or her liberty in violation of the constitution, or of any treaty or law of the United States." Originally, habeas corpus permitted collateral attack upon a prisoner's conviction only if the sentencing court lacked subject matter jurisdiction. Shortly after 1867, however, the Supreme Court began to recognize a growing number of circumstances where courts were said to have acted beyond their jurisdiction because some constitutional violation had extinguished or "voided" their jurisdiction. This development was of limited benefit to most prisoners, since most were confined under state convictions and relatively few of the rights guaranteed by the Constitution were thought to apply against the states. Even when a constitutional claim was available, state prisoners could not be granted federal habeas relief until all possibility of state judicial reliefâtrial, appellate, and postconvictionâhad been exhausted. Eventually two developments stimulated new growth. First, the jurisdictional tests, cumbersome and somewhat artificial, were discarded in favor of a more generous standard. Later, the explosion in the breadth of due process and in the extent of its application to the states multiplied the instances when a state prisoner might find relief in federal habeas corpus. Evolution began with two cases which reached the Court early in the last century and in which petitioners claimed that mob rule rather than due process of law led to their convictions and death sentences. The Court in Frank v. Mangum , 237 U.S. 309 (1915), denied the writ because Frank's claim had already been heard and rejected as part of the state appellate process. The Court did suggest, however, that a state court might lose jurisdiction by virtue of a substantial procedural defect, such as mob domination of the trial process, and that federal habeas relief would be available to anyone convicted as a consequence of the defect. It also indicated that the question of whether relief should be granted was not to be resolved solely by examination of the trial court record, as had historically been the case, but upon federal court consideration of the entire judicial process which pre-dated the petition. If Frank had been intended as a warning, it appears to have been in vain, for soon thereafter the Court confronted yet another conviction allegedly secured by mob intervention. In spite of the fact that the state appellate courts had already heard and denied the petitioners' claims, the Court ordered the lower federal court in which relief had been initially sought to make its own determination of the validity of petitioners' claims of procedural defect. Soon thereafter it became clear that federal habeas was not limited to instances of mob intervention or other external contaminants of the judicial process; it reached deficiencies from within the process which rendered the process so unfair as to result in a loss of life or liberty without due process of law, whether they took the form of a prosecutor's knowing use of perjured testimony and suppression of evidence that would impeach it, or of a denial of the assistance of counsel in criminal prosecutions, or of confessions or guilty pleas secured by government coercion. Early in the 1940s, the Court stopped requiring that an alleged constitutional violation void the jurisdiction of the trial court before federal habeas relief could be considered. Federal judges soon complained that federal prisoner abuses of habeas had become "legion." Congress responded by incorporating into the 1948 revision of the judicial code the first major revision of the federal habeas statute since 1867. State courts exerted little pressure for revision of the federal habeas statute in 1948. Although habeas relief had been available to state prisoners by statute since 1867 and subsequent decisions seemed to invite access, the hospitality that federal habeas extended to state convicts with due process and other federal constitutional claims had not yet become apparent. This all changed over the next two decades.